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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="covid-19-sentry">Covid-19 Sentry</h1>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#from-preprints">From Preprints</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-clinical-trials">From Clinical Trials</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-pubmed">From PubMed</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-patent-search">From Patent Search</a></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-preprints">From Preprints</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>Long-term temporal trends in incidence rate and case fatality of sepsis and COVID-19-related sepsis: nationwide registry study</strong> -
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Importance: Sepsis is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality. The majority of sepsis cases is attributed to bacterial infections, but virus infections can also induce sepsis. Conflicting results in incidence rates and case fatality trends of sepsis is reported, and how the COVID-19 pandemic influenced these trends are unknown. Objective: To estimate temporal trends in incidence rate and case fatality during a 14-year period from 2008 through 2021, and to assess possible shifts in these trends during the COVID-19 pandemic. Design: A nationwide longitudinal registry study using ICD-10 discharge codes to identify sepsis. Setting: All Norwegian hospitals from 2008 through 2021. Participants: All sepsis cases included 317.705 patients and of these, 222.832 had a first sepsis episode. Main outcomes and measures: Annual age-standardized incidence rates with 95% confidence intervals (CI). Poisson regression was used to estimate changes in incidence rates across time, and logistic regression was used to estimate odds ratios for in-hospital death. Results: Among 12.619.803 adult hospitalizations, 317.705 (2.5%) patients met the sepsis criteria and 222.832 (70.0%) had a first sepsis episode. In the period 2009-2019, the annual incidence rate for a first sepsis episode was stable (incidence rate ratio per year, 0.999; 95% CI, 0.994-1.004), whereas for all sepsis the incidence rate increased by 15.5% during the period (annual incidence rate ratio, 1.013; 95% CI 1.007-1.019). During the COVID-19 pandemic, the incidence rate ratio for a first sepsis was 0.877 (95% CI, 0.829-0.927) in 2020 and 0.929 (95% CI, 0.870-0.992) in 2021, and for all sepsis it was 0.870 (95% CI, 0.810-0.935) in 2020 and 0.908 (95% CI, 0.840-0.980) in 2021, compared to the previous 11-year period. In-hospital deaths declined in the period 2009-2019 (odds ratio per year, 0.954 [95% CI,0.950-0.958]), whereas deaths increased during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 (odds ratios, 1.061 [95% CI 1.001-1.124] and in 2021 odds ratio (1.164 [95% CI, 1.098-1.233]). Conclusion and relevance: We found a stable incidence rate of a first sepsis episode during the years 2009-2019. However, the increasing burden of all sepsis admissions indicates that sepsis awareness with updated guidelines and education must continue.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.18.22282501v1" target="_blank">Long-term temporal trends in incidence rate and case fatality of sepsis and COVID-19-related sepsis: nationwide registry study</a>
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<li><strong>Factors associated with release relief of Long COVID symptoms at 12-Months and their impact on daily life</strong> -
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Introduction: Our purpose was to describe the course of Long COVID symptoms after 12-month follow-up, their impact on daily life and the factors associated with the relief of symptoms. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted within an out-patient clinic for Long COVID patients. Participants, who had experienced their initial COVID-19 episode between January, 15 2020 and May 21, 2021, were contacted 12-months post onset. Their characteristics, symptom course at initial COVID-19 episode, Long COVID phase and one year follow-up along with remission status were collected through a questionnaire and a specific post COVID remission scale from complete remission to persistence of symptoms and dependence in daily life activities. Results: Among the 231 long COVID participants who answered the 12-month follow-up questionnaire, 63.2% had developed SARS-CoV-2 antibodies before COVID-19 vaccination. At 12-month follow-up, only 8.7% of the participants felt in complete remission while 28.6% noted a significant improvement of their symptoms. The prevalence rate of most symptoms remained high at 12 months: asthenia 83.1%, neurocognitive and neurological symptoms 91.8%, cardiothoracic symptoms 77.9%, musculoskeletal 78.8%. During Long COVID phase, 62.2% had to stop working at least once and only 32.5% resumed professional activities full time at one year follow-up. The presence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies before COVID-19 vaccination was associated with an increased probability of significant improvement at one year (aPRR: 1.60, p=0.028) while ageusia at initial Long COVID phase was associated with a lower probability of improvement (aPRR: 0.38, p=0.007). Conclusion: While observing a trend towards some improvement in a majority of long COVID patients at a 12-month follow-up, fatigue, musculoskeletal pain, cardiothoracic symptoms and neurocognitive impairment persisted in most of them. Having developed SARS-CoV-2 antibodies was associated with a better prognosis while persistent ageusia at long COVID phase seems to be associated with the persistence of symptoms.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.18.22282459v1" target="_blank">Factors associated with release relief of Long COVID symptoms at 12-Months and their impact on daily life</a>
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<li><strong>In silico docking screen identifies airway host protease targets for human SERPINs</strong> -
<div>
Proteases play key roles in viral replication cycles. They can provide cleavage maturation of viral glycoproteins, processing of viral polyproteins, or disassembly of viral capsids. Thus, proteases constitute ideal targets for antiviral intervention: pharmaceutically, by small molecule inhibitors, or naturally, by host immune responses. Indeed, we and others have shown that individual members of the Serine protease inhibitor (SERPIN) family have specific antiviral function by blocking proteolytic steps inherent to viral replication cycles. Whether additional members of the large SERPIN family possess antiviral activity and whether SERPINs function as part of the antiviral cell-intrinsic immune response, is currently unknown. Here, we found that specific SERPINs are produced upon infection with clinically relevant respiratory viruses in vitro and in vivo, and in concert with classical interferon-stimulated genes. We next developed a structure-based in silico screen to uncover non-canonical SERPIN-protease pairs. We identified several SERPINs with potential antiviral function, including: SERPINE1 targeting cathepsin L, required for SARS-CoV-2 entry; SERPINB8 targeting furin, required for glycoprotein maturation cleavage of numerous viruses; and SERPINB2 targeting adenovirus protease, which suggests the first direct-acting antiviral SERPIN. Our study demonstrates how proteolysis is modulated for antiviral defense and how this process could inform antiviral targets against clinically relevant respiratory pathogens.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.18.517133v1" target="_blank">In silico docking screen identifies airway host protease targets for human SERPINs</a>
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<li><strong>The contribution of population age-sex structure to the excess mortality estimates of 2020-2021 in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden</strong> -
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Background: The Nordic countries are an ideal case study of the COVID-19 pandemic due to their comparability, high data quality, and variable responses. Excess mortality is a key metric but it is sensitive to data quality, model assumptions, and population structure, with diverse estimates published so far. Methods: We investigated the age- and sex-specific mortality patterns during 2020-2021 for the five Nordic countries using annualized age- and sex specific death rates and populations. We compared the total age- and sex-adjusted excess deaths, ratios of actual vs. expected death rates, and age-standardized excess death estimates. We estimated excess deaths with several time periods and sensitivity tests, using 42 sex and age groups. Our models are less sensitive to outlier years than models based on 5 years of data. Results: Age-specific death rates have declining trends that reflect real improving health demographics. Our total excess mortality is close to WHO9s estimates, except higher for Norway and lower for Sweden, partly due to data used. Total excess deaths were dominated by the age group 70-89 years, was not identified in children, and more pronounced in men than women. Sweden had more excess deaths in 2020 than 2021 whereas Finland, Norway, and Denmark had the opposite. Denmark has the highest death rates before and during the pandemic, whereas Sweden in 2020 had the largest mortality increase. The age-standardized mortality of Denmark, Iceland and Norway was lowest in 2020, and 2021 was one of the lowest mortality years for all Nordic countries. We show that neutral baseline methods underestimate excess deaths and we document the importance of outlier mortality years. Conclusions: We provide excess mortality estimates mortality of the Nordic countries in relation to sex and age, with several metrics important in combination for a full understanding and comparison of the countries. We additionally identify important effects such as mortality displacement and sensitivities that affect our estimates and those of other excess mortality models.
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.18.22282495v1" target="_blank">The contribution of population age-sex structure to the excess mortality estimates of 2020-2021 in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden</a>
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<li><strong>Special Olympics global report on COVID-19 vaccination and reasons not to vaccinate among adults with intellectual disabilities</strong> -
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Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected people with intellectual disabilities worldwide. The objective of this study was to identify global rates of COVID-19 vaccination and reasons not to vaccinate among adults with intellectual disabilities (ID) associated with country economic income levels. Methods The Special Olympics COVID-19 online survey was administered in January-February 2022 to adults with ID from 138 countries. Descriptive analyses of survey responses include 95% margins of error. Logistic regression and Pearson Chi-squared tests were calculated to assess associations with predictive variables for vaccination using R 4.1.2 software. Results Participants (n=3560) represented 18 low (n=410), 35 lower-middle (n=1182), 41 upper-middle (n=837), and 44 high (n=1131) income countries. Globally, 76% (74.8-77.6%) received a COVID-19 vaccination while 49.5% (47.9-51.2%) received a COVID-19 booster. Upper-middle (93% (91.2-94.7%)) and high-income country (94% (92.1-95.0%)) participants had the highest rates of vaccination while low-income countries had the lowest rates (38% (33.3-42.7%)). In multivariate regression models, country economic income level (OR = 3.12, 95% CI [2.81, 3.48]), age (OR = 1.04, 95% CI [1.03, 1.05]), and living with family (OR = 0.70, 95% CI [0.53, 0.92]) were associated with vaccination. Among LLMICs, the major reason for not vaccinating was lack of access (41.2% (29.5-52.9%)). Globally, concerns about side effects (42%, (36.5-48.1%)) and parent/guardian not wanting the adult with ID to vaccinate (32% (26.1-37.0%)) were the most common reasons for not vaccinating. Conclusion Adults with ID from low and low-middle income countries reported fewer COVID-19 vaccinations, suggesting reduced access and availability of resources in these countries. Globally, COVID-19 vaccination levels among adults with ID were higher than the general population. Interventions should address the increased risk of infection for those in congregate living situations and family caregiver apprehension to vaccinate this high-risk population.
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.16.22282406v1" target="_blank">Special Olympics global report on COVID-19 vaccination and reasons not to vaccinate among adults with intellectual disabilities</a>
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<li><strong>Human Early Syncytiotrophoblasts Are Highly Susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 Infection</strong> -
<div>
The ongoing and devastating pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has led to a global public health crisis. COVID-19 is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and can potentially pose a serious risk to maternal and neonatal health. Cases of abnormal pregnancy and vertical transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from mother to foetus have been reported but no firm conclusions are drawn. Trophoblasts are the major constituents of the placenta to protect and nourish the developing foetus. However, direct in vivo investigation of trophoblast susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 and of COVID-19 and pregnancy is challenging. Here we report that human early syncytiotrophoblasts (eSTBs) are highly susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection in an angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2)-dependent manner. From human expanded potential stem cells (hEPSCs), we derived bona fide trophoblast stem cells (TSCs) that resembled those originated from the blastocyst and the placenta in generating functional syncytiotrophoblasts (STBs) and extravillus trophoblasts (EVTs) and in low expression of HLA-A/B and amniotic epithelial (AME) cell signature. The EPSC-TSCs and their derivative trophoblasts including trophoblast organoids could be infected by SARS-CoV-2. Remarkably, eSTBs were highly susceptible to SARS-CoV-2. They expressed high levels of ACE2 and produced substantially higher amounts of virion than Vero E6 cells which are widely used in SARS-CoV-2 research and vaccine production. These findings provide experimental evidence for the clinical observations that opportunistic SARS-CoV-2 infection during pregnancy can occur. At low concentrations, two well characterized antivirals, remdesivir and GC376, effectively eliminated infection of eSTBs by SARS-CoV-2 and middle east respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus (MERS-CoV), and rescued their developmental arrest caused by the virus infection. Several human cell lines have been used in coronavirus research. However, they suffer from genetic and/or innate immune defects and have some of the long-standing technical challenges such as cell transfection and genetic manipulation. In contrast, hEPSCs are normal human stem cells that are robust in culture, genetically stable and permit efficient gene-editing. They can produce and supply large amounts of physiologically relevant normal and genome-edited human cells such as eSTBs for isolation, propagation and production of coronaviruses for basic research, antiviral drug tests and safety evaluation.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.17.516978v1" target="_blank">Human Early Syncytiotrophoblasts Are Highly Susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 Infection</a>
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<li><strong>Mindfulness supports emotional resilience in children during the COVID-19 Pandemic</strong> -
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An important aspect of mental health in children is emotional resilience, the capacity to adapt to, and recover from, stressors and emotional challenges. Variation in trait mindfulness, one’s disposition to attend to experiences with an open and nonjudgmental attitude, may be an important individual difference in children that supports emotional resilience. In this study, we investigated whether trait mindfulness was related to emotional resilience in response to stressful changes in education and home-life during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. We conducted a correlational study examining self-report data from July 2020 to February 2021, from 163 eight-to-ten-year-old children living in the US. Higher trait mindfulness scores correlated with less stress, anxiety, depression, and negative affect in children, and lower ratings of COVID-19 impact on their lives. Mindfulness moderated the relationship between COVID-19 child impact and negative affect. Children scoring high on mindfulness showed no correlation between rated COVID-19 impact and negative affect, whereas those who scored low on mindfulness showed a positive correlation between child COVID-19 impact and negative affect. Higher levels of trait mindfulness may have helped children to better cope with a wide range of COVID-19 stressors. Future studies should investigate the mechanisms by which trait mindfulness supports emotional resilience in children.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.18.22282510v1" target="_blank">Mindfulness supports emotional resilience in children during the COVID-19 Pandemic</a>
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<li><strong>Comprative evaluation of Advanced Oxidation Processes (AOPs) for reducing SARS-CoV-2 viral load from campus sewage water</strong> -
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Although the presence of SARS-CoV-2 fragments in raw sewage water are not much concerning, since it is a new pathogen and its fate in the environment is poorly understood; therefore efforts are needed for their effective removal. In under-developed countries with poor sewersheds and sanitation practices, the raw sewage water might come in contact with rivers and other water bodies and is generally used by the population for various purposes including drinking water. Hence it is important to properly treat sewage water to reduce public health risks, if any. Our study evaluated various advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) for disinfection of SARS-CoV-2 from sewage water collected from the academic institutional residential campus. The present study is the first report showing hydrodynamic cavitation (HC) used to reduce the SARS-CoV-2 viral load from sewage water. Additionally, we have also evaluated hybrid techniques like HC/O3, HC/O3/H2O2, HC/H2O2, O3/UV, UV/H2O2, UV/H2O2/O3, and O3/H2O2 for the minimization of the SARS-CoV-2 viral load from sewage water. The sewage water treatment techniques were evaluated based on its viral concentration-reducing efficiency by comparing it with the same raw sewage water sample. However, ozone alone and its combination with other disinfecting techniques (like HC, UV, and H2O2) showed &gt;95% SARS-CoV-2 specific RNA-reducing efficiency (also known as viral load). The AOPs treated sewage water was subjected to total nucleic acid isolation followed by RT-qPCR for viral load estimation. Interestingly, all sewage water treatment techniques used in this study significantly reduces both the SARS-CoV-2 viral load as well as PMMoV (faecal indicator) load.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.16.22282387v1" target="_blank">Comprative evaluation of Advanced Oxidation Processes (AOPs) for reducing SARS-CoV-2 viral load from campus sewage water</a>
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<li><strong>Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children and adolescents: determinants and association with quality of life and mental health - A cross-sectional study</strong> -
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Background The medium-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the wellbeing of children and adolescents remains unclear. More than two years into the pandemic, we aimed to quantify the frequency and determinants of having been severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and estimate its impact on health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and mental health. Methods Data was drawn from a population-based cohort of children and adolescents, recruited between December 2021 and June 2022, in Geneva, Switzerland. We measured the impact of the pandemic via the Coronavirus impact scale, which assesses the multidimensional impact of the pandemic at the child and family level through parent9s report. A score higher than one standard deviation above the mean was deemed a severe impact. Parents additionally reported about their offspring HRQoL and mental health with validated scales. Determinants of having been severely impacted were assessed with logistic models, as were the associations between having experienced a severe impact and poor HRQoL or mental health. Results Out of 2101 participants aged 2-17, 12.7% had experienced a severe pandemic impact. Having a lasting health condition, a pandemic-related worsening of lifestyle habits or an unfavorable family environment were associated with having been severely impacted by the pandemic. Participants who had experienced a severe pandemic impact were more likely to present poor HRQoL (aOR=3.1; 95%CI: 2.3-4.4) and poor mental health (aOR=3.9; 95%CI: 2.5-6.2). Conclusions The COVID-19 pandemic may have persistent consequences on the wellbeing of children and adolescents, especially among those with health and family vulnerabilities.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.18.22282491v1" target="_blank">Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children and adolescents: determinants and association with quality of life and mental health - A cross-sectional study</a>
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<li><strong>Proteomic analysis of circulating immune cells identifies novel cellular phenotypes associated with COVID-19 severity</strong> -
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Certain serum proteins, including CRP and D-dimer, have prognostic value in patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection. Nonetheless, these factors are non-specific, and provide limited mechanistic insight into the peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) populations which drive the pathogenesis of severe COVID-19. To identify novel cellular phenotypes associated with disease progression, we here describe a comprehensive, unbiased analysis of the total and plasma membrane proteomes of PBMCs from a cohort of 40 unvaccinated individuals with SARS-CoV-2 infection, spanning the whole spectrum of disease severity. Combined with RNA-seq and flow cytometry data from the same donors, we define a comprehensive multi-omic profile for each severity level, revealing cumulative immune cell dysregulation in progressive disease. In particular, the cell surface proteins CEACAMs1, 6 and 8, CD177, CD63 and CD89 are strongly associated with severe COVID-19, corresponding to the emergence of atypical CD3+CD4+CD177+ and CD16+CEACAM1/6/8+ mononuclear cells. Utilisation of these markers may facilitate real-time patient assessment by flow cytometry, and identify immune cell populations that could be targeted to ameliorate immunopathology.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.16.22282338v1" target="_blank">Proteomic analysis of circulating immune cells identifies novel cellular phenotypes associated with COVID-19 severity</a>
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<li><strong>Hospital length of stay throughout bed pathways and factors affecting this time: a non-concurrent cohort study of Colombia COVID-19 patients and an unCoVer network project</strong> -
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Predictions of hospital beds occupancy depends on hospital admission rates and the length of stay (LoS) according to bed type (hospital and intensive care unit beds). The objective of this study was to describe the LoS of COVID-19 hospital patients in Colombia during 2020-2021. Accelerated failure time models were used to estimate the LoS distribution according to each bed type and throughout each bed pathway. Acceleration factors and 95% confidence intervals were calculated to measure the effect on LoS of the outcome, sex, age, admission period during the epidemic (i.e., epidemic waves, peaks or valleys, and before/after vaccination period), and patients’ geographic origin. Most of the admitted COVID-19 patients occupied just hospital bed. Recovered patients spent more time in the hospital and intensive care unit than deceased patients. Men had longer LoS than women. In general, the LoS increased with age. Finally, the LoS varied along epidemic waves. It was lower in epidemic valleys than peaks, and became shorter after vaccinations began in Colombia than before. Our study highlights the necessity of analyzing local data on hospital admission rates and LoS to design strategies to prioritize hospital beds resources during the current and future pandemics.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.17.22282466v1" target="_blank">Hospital length of stay throughout bed pathways and factors affecting this time: a non-concurrent cohort study of Colombia COVID-19 patients and an unCoVer network project</a>
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<li><strong>Hamsters are a model for COVID-19 alveolar regeneration mechanisms: an opportunity to understand post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2</strong> -
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A relevant number of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) survivors suffers from post-acute sequelae of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) (PASC). Current evidence suggests a dysregulated alveolar regeneration in COVID-19 as a possible explanation for respiratory PASC symptoms, a phenomenon which deserves further investigation in a suitable animal model. This study investigates morphologic and transcriptomic features of alveolar regeneration in SARS-CoV-2 infected Syrian golden hamsters. We demonstrate that CK8+ alveolar differentiation intermediate (ADI) cells accumulate following SARS-CoV-2-induced diffuse alveolar damage. A subset of ADI cells shows nuclear accumulation of p53 at 6- and 14-days post infection (dpi), indicating a prolonged block in the ADI state. Transcriptome data shows the expression of gene signatures driving ADI cell senescence, epithelial-mesenchymal transition, and angiogenesis. Moreover, we show that multipotent CK14+ airway basal cell progenitors migrate out of terminal bronchioles, aiding alveolar regeneration. At 14 dpi, persistence of ADI cells, peribronchiolar proliferates, M2-type macrophages, and sub-pleural fibrosis is observed, indicating incomplete alveolar restoration. The results demonstrate that the hamster model reliably phenocopies indicators of a dysregulated alveolar regeneration of COVID-19 patients. The study provides a suitable translational model for future research on the pathomechanims of PASC and testing of prophylactic and therapeutical approaches.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.17.515635v1" target="_blank">Hamsters are a model for COVID-19 alveolar regeneration mechanisms: an opportunity to understand post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2</a>
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<li><strong>Design and validation of an exposure system for efficient inter-animal SARS-CoV-2 airborne transmission in Syrian hamsters</strong> -
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SARS-CoV-2 is a highly transmissible respiratory pathogen whose main transmission route is airborne. Development of an animal model and exposure system that recapitulates airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is integral for understanding the dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 spread in individuals and populations. Here we designed, built, and characterized a hamster transmission caging and exposure system that allows for efficient SARS-CoV-2 airborne transmission from an infected index animal to naive recipients under unidirectional airflow, without contribution from fomite or direct contact transmission. To validate our system, we assessed a 1:1 or 1:4 ratio of infected index to naive recipient hamsters and compared their virological and clinical measurements after eight hours of airborne exposure. Airborne exposure concentrations and pulmonary deposited dose of SARS-CoV-2 in index and naive hamsters, respectively, were similar in both groups. Daily nasal viral RNA levels, and terminal (day 5) lung viral RNA and infectious virus, and fecal viral RNA levels were statistically similar among 1:1 and 1:4 naive animals. However, virological measurements in the 1:4 naive animals were more variable than the 1:1 naive animals, likely due to hamster piling behavior creating uneven SARS-CoV-2 exposure during the grouped 1:4 airborne exposure. This resulted in slight, but not statistically significant, changes in daily body weights between the 1:1 and 1:4 naive groups. Our report describes a multi-chamber caging and exposure system that allowed for efficient SARS-CoV-2 airborne transmission in single and grouped hamsters. This system can be used to better define airborne transmission dynamics and test transmission-blocking therapeutic strategies against SARS-CoV-2.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.18.517035v1" target="_blank">Design and validation of an exposure system for efficient inter-animal SARS-CoV-2 airborne transmission in Syrian hamsters</a>
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<li><strong>Innate immune response to SARS-1 CoV-2 infection contributes to neuronal damage in human iPSC-derived peripheral neurons</strong> -
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Severe acute respiratory coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection causes neurological disease in some patients suggesting that infection can affect both the peripheral and central nervous system (PNS and CNS, respectively). It is not clear whether the outcome of SARS-CoV-2 infection of PNS and CNS neurons is similar, and which are the key factors that cause neurological disease: SARS-CoV-2 infection or the subsequent immune response. Here, we addressed these questions by infecting human induced-pluripotent stem cell-derived CNS and PNS neurons with the beta strain of SARS-CoV-2. Our results show that SARS-CoV-2 infects PNS neurons more efficiently than CNS neurons, despite lower expression levels of angiotensin converting enzyme 2. Infected PNS neurons produced interferon lambda 1, several interferon stimulated genes and proinflammatory cytokines. They also displayed neurodegenerative-like alterations, as indicated by increased levels of sterile alpha and Toll/interleukin receptor motif-containing protein 1, amyloid precursor protein and alpha-synuclein and lower levels of nicotinamide mononucleotide adenylyltransferase 2 and beta-III-tubulin. Interestingly, blockade of the Janus kinase and signal transducer and activator of transcription pathway by Ruxolitinib did not increase SARS-CoV-2 infection, but reduced neurodegeneration, suggesting that an exacerbated neuronal innate immune response contributes to pathogenesis in the PNS.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.18.517047v1" target="_blank">Innate immune response to SARS-1 CoV-2 infection contributes to neuronal damage in human iPSC-derived peripheral neurons</a>
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<li><strong>Rising SARS-CoV-2 Seroprevalence and Patterns of Cross-Variant Antibody Neutralization in UK Domestic Cats</strong> -
<div>
Recent evidence confirming cat-to-human SARS-CoV-2 transmission has highlighted the importance of monitoring infection in domestic cats. Although the effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection on feline health are poorly characterized, cats have close contact with humans, and with both domesticated and wild animals. Accordingly, they could act as a reservoir of infection, an intermediate host and a source of novel variants. To investigate the spread of the virus in the cat population, serum samples were tested for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies by ELISA and a pseudotype-based virus neutralization assay, designed to detect exposure to variants known to be circulating in the human population. Overall seroprevalence was 3.2%, peaking at 5.3% in autumn 2021. Variant-specific neutralizing antibody responses were detected with titers waning over time. The variant-specific response in the feline population correlated with and trailed the variants circulating in the human population, indicating multiple ongoing human-to-cat spill-over events.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.18.517046v1" target="_blank">Rising SARS-CoV-2 Seroprevalence and Patterns of Cross-Variant Antibody Neutralization in UK Domestic Cats</a>
</div></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-clinical-trials">From Clinical Trials</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>COVID-19 Bivalent Booster Megastudy</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Behavioral: COVID Booster text messages<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   University of Pennsylvania<br/><b>Enrolling by invitation</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Study on Utilization, Adherence, and Acceptability of Voluntary Routine COVID-19 Self-testing Among Students, Staff and Health Workers at Two Institutions in Mizoram, India.</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19 Pandemic<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Diagnostic Test: COVID-19 Self testing and related messaging<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   PATH;   UNITAID;   Zoram Medical College;   Pacchunga University College;   ALERT India;   Government of Mizoram<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Assessing Performance of the Testing Done Simple Covid 19 Antigen Test</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Diagnostic Test: Testing Done Simple SARS CoV-2 Antigen Test<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Testing Done Simple;   Nao Medical Urgent Care<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Study to Evaluate EDP-235 in Non-hospitalized Adults With COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: EDP-235;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Enanta Pharmaceuticals, Inc<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The LAVA (Lateral Flow Antigen Validation and Applicability) 2 Study for COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   SARS-CoV-2 Infection<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Diagnostic Test: Innova Lateral Flow Test<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Q-POC COVID-19 Clinical Evaluation</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Diagnostic Test: RT-PCR Test;   Diagnostic Test: Real-time PCR Test<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   QuantuMDx Group Ltd;   EDP Biotech;   Paragon Rx Clinical;   PathAI;   PRX Research and Development<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Acute Rehabilitation in Patients With COVID-19 Pneumonia</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   Rehabilitation;   Physical Medicine<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Procedure: Acute rehabilitation program<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Institut za Rehabilitaciju Sokobanjska Beograd<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Study of RAY1216 Tablets Compared With Placebo in Patients With Mild to Moderate SARS-CoV-2 Infection</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Mild to Moderate COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: RAY1216;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Guangdong Raynovent Biotech Co., Ltd<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Enhancing Protection Against Influenza and COVID-19 for Pregnant Women and Medically at Risk Children</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Influenza;   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Behavioral: Nudge<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   University of Adelaide<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Trial Evaluate the Immunogenicity and Safety of Recombinant COVID-19 Omicron-Delta Variant Vaccine (CHO Cell)</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: Omicron-Delta Recombinant Novel Coronavirus Protein Vaccine (CHO cells);   Biological: Recombinant Novel Coronavirus Protein Vaccine (CHO cells)<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Anhui Zhifei Longcom Biologic Pharmacy Co., Ltd.<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>COVID-19 Antibody Responses in Cystic Fibrosis</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   Cystic Fibrosis<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Biological: Blood sample<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Hospices Civils de Lyon;   Queen’s University, Belfast<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Phase 1, Randomised, Double-blinded, Placebo-controlled, Dose-escalation Study to Evaluate the Safety and Immunogenicity of RH109 as Booster</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19 Pandemic<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: Lyophilized COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine;   Drug: Sodium chloride<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Wuhan Recogen Biotechnology Co., Ltd.;   Shenzhen Rhegen Biotechnology Co., Ltd.;   Wuhan Rhegen Biotechnology Co., Ltd.<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Message Communicating Latest Data on COVID Transmission in Patient’s Area</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Behavioral: COVID Booster text messages<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   University of Pennsylvania<br/><b>Enrolling by invitation</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Message From Local Pharmacy Team</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Behavioral: COVID Booster text messages<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   University of Pennsylvania<br/><b>Enrolling by invitation</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Planning Message Recommending Same Time/Location as Last Vaccine</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Behavioral: COVID Booster text messages<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   University of Pennsylvania<br/><b>Enrolling by invitation</b></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-pubmed">From PubMed</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Gastrointestinal, liver, pancreas, oral and psychological long-term symptoms of COVID-19 after recovery; A review</strong> - Due to the importance of control and prevention of COVID-19-correlated long-term symptoms, the present review article has summarized what has been currently known regarding the molecular and cellular mechanisms linking COVID-19 to important long-term complications including psychological complications, liver and gastrointestinal manifestations, oral signs as well as even diabetes. COVID-19 can directly affect the body cells through their Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 [ACE-2] to induce…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Pexidartinib (PLX3397) through restoring hippocampal synaptic plasticity ameliorates social isolation-induced mood disorders</strong> - Social behavior is essential for the well-being and survival of individuals. However, social isolation is a serious public health issue, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, affecting a significant number of people worldwide, and can lead to serious psychological crises. Microglia, innate immune cells in the brain, are strongly implicated in the development of psychiatry. Although many microglial inhibitors have been used to treat depression, there is no literature report on pexidartinib…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Discovery and mechanism of action of Thonzonium bromide from an FDA-approved drug library with potent and broad-spectrum inhibitory activity against main proteases of human coronaviruses</strong> - Although the effective drugs or vaccines have been developed to prevent the spread of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), their efficacy may be limited for the viral evolution and immune escape. Thus, it is urgently needed to develop the novel broad-spectrum antiviral agents to control the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) global pandemic. The 3C-like protease (3CL^(pro)) is a highly conserved cysteine proteinase that plays a pivotal role in processing the viral…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Diabetes medications and associations with Covid-19 outcomes in the N3C database: A national retrospective cohort study</strong> - CONCLUSIONS: There were clinically significant associations between metformin use and less severe COVID-19 compared to SU, but not compared to DPP4i. New-user studies and randomized trials are needed to assess early outpatient treatment and post-exposure prophylaxis with therapeutics that are safe in adults, children, pregnancy and available worldwide.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A GABA-receptor agonist reduces pneumonitis severity, viral load, and death rate in SARS-CoV-2-infected mice</strong> - Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and GABA-receptors (GABA-Rs) form a major neurotransmitter system in the brain. GABA-Rs are also expressed by 1) cells of the innate and adaptive immune system and act to inhibit their inflammatory activities, and 2) lung epithelial cells and GABA-R agonists/potentiators have been observed to limit acute lung injuries. These biological properties suggest that GABA-R agonists may have potential for treating COVID-19. We previously reported that GABA-R agonist…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Translation suppression underlies the restrained COVID-19 mRNA vaccine response in the high-risk immunocompromised group</strong> - CONCLUSIONS: This is the first study to demonstrate that ISs, sirolimus and mycophenolate inhibited Co-mV-induced Sp protein synthesis via translation repression. Selective use of tacrolimus or drug holiday of sirolimus can be a potential means to rescue translation-dependent Sp protein production. These findings lay a strong foundation for guiding future studies aimed at improving Co-mV responses in high-risk IC patients.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>SARS-CoV-2 modulates inflammatory responses of alveolar epithelial type II cells <em>via</em> PI3K/AKT pathway</strong> - CONCLUSION: The findings of our study, showed that SARS-CoV-2 S protein suppressed inflammatory responses in alveolar epithelial type II cells at early stages of infection through activation of the PI3K/AKT pathway. Thus, our results suggest that at early stages SARS-CoV-2 S protein signals inhibit immune responses to the virus allowing it to propagate the infection while in combination with TLR2 signals enhances PAI-1 expression, potentially affecting the local coagulation cascade.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Nucleotide and nucleoside-based drugs: past, present, and future</strong> - Nucleotide and nucleoside-based analogue drugs are widely used for the treatment of both acute and chronic viral infections. These drugs inhibit viral replication due to one or more distinct mechanisms. It modifies the virus’s genetic structure by reducing viral capacity in every replication cycle. Their clinical success has shown strong effectiveness against several viruses, including ebolavirus, hepatitis C virus, HIV, MERS, SARS-Cov, and the most recent emergent SARS-Cov2. In this review,…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>User experience reevaluation and diffusion of technology in the context of compulsory usage illustrated by the example of telepsychotherapy-a literature review</strong> - CONCLUSIONS: Telepsychohtherapy has become an integral part of psychotherapeutic care. A hybrid system in close coordination between provider and patient may prevail, addressing individual needs of both parties to achieve optimal care and provider well-being. This requires transparent regulations, guidelines, and standards.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Identification of a potent dual-function inhibitor for hIMPDH isoforms by computer-aided drug discovery approaches</strong> - Inosine monophosphate dehydrogenase (IMPDH) is a key enzyme in de novo biosynthesis of purine nucleotides. Due to this important role, it is a great target to drug discovery for a wide range of activities, especially immunosuppressant in heart and kidney transplantation. Both human IMPDH isoforms are expressed in stimulated lymphocytes. In addition to the side effects of existing drugs, previous studies have mainly focused on the type II isoform. In this study, virtual screening and…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Herbo-mineral formulation, Divya-Swasari-Vati averts SARS-CoV-2 pseudovirus entry into human alveolar epithelial cells by interfering with spike protein-ACE 2 interaction and IL-6/TNF-α /NF-κB signaling</strong> - The herbo-mineral formulation, Divya-Swasari-Vati (DSV), is a well-known Ayurvedic medication for respiratory ailments. In a recent pre-clinical study, DSV rescued humanized zebrafish from SARS-CoV-2 S-protein-induced pathologies. This merited for an independent evaluation of DSV as a SARS-CoV-2 entry inhibitor in the human host cell and its effectiveness in ameliorating associated cytokine production. The ELISA-based protein-protein interaction study showed that DSV inhibited the interactions…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Local Anesthetic Like Inhibition of the Cardiac Na<sup>+</sup> Channel Nav1.5 by Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine</strong> - CONCLUSION: This study demonstrated that CQ and HCQ exert LA-typical effects on Nav1.5 involving the proposed LA binding site, thus contributing to their arrhythmogenic properties.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>XNAzymes targeting the SARS-CoV-2 genome inhibit viral infection</strong> - The unprecedented emergence and spread of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, underscores the need for diagnostic and therapeutic technologies that can be rapidly tailored to novel threats. Here, we show that site-specific RNA endonuclease XNAzymes - artificial catalysts composed of single-stranded synthetic xeno-nucleic acid oligonucleotides (in this case 2’-deoxy-2’-fluoro-β-D-arabino nucleic acid) - may be designed, synthesised and screened within days, enabling…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>AMPK directly phosphorylates TBK1 to integrate glucose sensing into innate immunity</strong> - Nutrient sensing and damage sensing are two fundamental processes in living organisms. While hyperglycemia is frequently linked to diabetes-related vulnerability to microbial infection, how body glucose levels affect innate immune responses to microbial invasion is not fully understood. Here, we surprisingly found that viral infection led to a rapid and dramatic decrease in blood glucose levels in rodents, leading to robust AMPK activation. AMPK, once activated, directly phosphorylates TBK1 at…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Repositioning of anti-dengue compounds against SARS-CoV-2 as viral polyprotein processing inhibitor</strong> - A therapy for COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 19) caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) remains elusive due to the lack of an effective antiviral therapeutic molecule. The SARS-CoV-2 main protease (Mpro), which plays a vital role in the viral life cycle, is one of the most studied and validated drug targets. In Several prior studies, numerous possible chemical entities were proposed as potential Mpro inhibitors; however, most failed at various stages of drug…</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-patent-search">From Patent Search</h1>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="daily-dose">Daily-Dose</h1>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-vox">From Vox</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</a></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Indian Coal Mine That Razed a Village and Shrank a Forest</strong> - A company run by Asia’s richest man, Gautam Adani, is strip-mining tribal lands for fossil fuels. Forest-dwellers are fighting back. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/the-indian-coal-mine-that-razed-a-village-and-shrank-a-forest">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Why Jerome Powell Could Be the Most Important Person in Washington Between Now and 2024</strong> - With gridlock looming in Congress, the task of stabilizing the economy will fall largely on the Fed chair. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/why-jerome-powell-could-be-the-most-important-person-in-washington-between-now-and-2024">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>When Election Deniers Concede</strong> - In the midterms, voters rejected Stop the Steal candidates in critical swing states. Is the democracy crisis over? - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-political-scene/when-election-deniers-concede">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Toughness of Nancy Pelosi</strong> - She helped save Obamacare and other transformative legislation, and made it clear when the nonsense had to stop. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-toughness-of-nancy-pelosi">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Dark Side of the World Cup</strong> - Heidi Blake on FIFA’s dirty business, and how Qatar came to host the games. Plus, Stephania Taladrid on Latino voters in the midterms; and Susan Orlean on the queen of the tiger mothers. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/the-dark-side-of-the-world-cup">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>The Federalist Society controls the federal judiciary, so why can’t they stop whining?</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/NOrEL1uG-sBxYIS3msD01kPIiBU=/0x0:3000x2250/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71649146/1213500127.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas speaks during a conference of The Federalist Society in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, on January 31, 2020. | Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
All they do is win, win, win, no matter what. So why are America’s most powerful lawyers so unhappy?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AkOwNP">
William Pryor is chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. For nearly two decades, he’s ruled on <a href="https://casetext.com/case/rodriguez-v-secy-fla-dept-of-corr-1">which death row inmates will live</a> and which will die in the states of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. He’s <a href="https://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/unpub/files/201412696order.pdf">overruled Cabinet secretaries</a> and <a href="https://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/201013211.pdf">reshaped how entire states conduct their elections</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qVT93M">
He’s also a very bad standup comedian.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9cinpM">
On Thursday, Pryor gave the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQKxxJFV2do">opening speech</a> at the annual conference of the most powerful legal organization in the United States. But the bulk of the judge’s remarks to <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/11/18/22783108/federalist-society-capitalism-woke-corporations-milton-friedman-supreme-court-judiciary-judges">the Federalist Society</a> was a Bill O’Reilly-style barrage of insult comedy, largely directed at left-leaning journalists who cover the federal judiciary. Sample joke: “No less an authority than [Slate’s Supreme Court reporter] Mark Joseph Stern — and really, is there less an authority?”
</p>
<div id="vGmQdu">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" dir="ltr" lang="en">
Chief Judge Pryor: “No less an authority than Mark Joseph Stern—and really, is there less an authority?—has explained: ‘FedSoc judges tend to hire FedSoc clerks … the radicalization machine produces an endless line of young lawyers even more extreme than their predecessors.’” <a href="https://t.co/l1LrQtqcmC">pic.twitter.com/l1LrQtqcmC</a>
</p>
— Mark Joseph Stern (<span class="citation" data-cites="mjs_DC">@mjs_DC</span>) <a href="https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/status/1590720902781890560?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 10, 2022</a>
</blockquote></div></li>
</ul>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FmEzDY">
It’s hard to imagine an event that better symbolizes the mix of power and pathos that underlies the Federalist Society than Pryor’s foray into insult comedy. Here is this eminence of the legal profession — a lifetime appointee speaking to an organization whose members <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/12/9/20962980/trump-supreme-court-federal-judges">dominate the federal judiciary</a>, and especially the nation’s highest Court. And yet he can’t help but obsess over a handful of powerless scribes who write disparagingly about his friends in the society.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dOEkhl">
Ideas that begin with the Federalist Society frequently become Supreme Court opinions in just a few years. In the past, the society’s annual gathering has foreshadowed the <a href="https://fedsoc.org/conferences/2016-national-lawyers-convention#agenda-item-civil-rights-the-second-amendment-enforcing-the-heller-decision">destruction of US gun laws</a>; the <a href="https://archive.thinkprogress.org/the-little-noticed-conservative-plan-to-permanently-lock-democrats-out-of-policymaking-9f776ad16635/">strangulation of the federal administrative state</a>; and, in one of its increasingly rare high-profile failures, the attempted <a href="https://fedsoc.org/conferences/2010-national-lawyers-convention#agenda-item-litigation-debating-the-constitutionality-of-the-federal-health-care-legislation">death of Obamacare</a>. The five most conservative Supreme Court justices, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/11/politics/supreme-court-justices-dobbs-decision-federalist-society">four of whom attended the society’s annual black-tie dinner</a> this year, are all enthusiastic supporters of the Federalist Society. I try to attend the Federalist Society’s conference every year, largely so that I’ll know what Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch will say in their future judicial opinions.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="l0jryF">
Yet this year was different. Indeed, it often felt like two conferences, neither of which offered much insight into the kind of world the Federalist Society’s most powerful acolytes will build for us in the coming years.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EjtfsS">
The first conference was largely a retrospective, looking back upon the impressive array of victories the conservative legal movement chalked up in the Supreme Court’s last term. Panels <a href="https://fedsoc.org/conferences/2022-national-lawyers-convention#agenda-item-dobbs-roe-casey-and-the-rule-of-law">celebrated the death of <em>Roe v. Wade</em></a> and the gaping hole the Federalist Society’s justices <a href="https://fedsoc.org/conferences/2022-national-lawyers-convention#agenda-item-religious-liberty-and-education-kennedy-carson-and-parental-rights">tore into the wall separating church and state</a>. The first day of the conference included <a href="https://fedsoc.org/conferences/2022-national-lawyers-convention#agenda-item-render-law-unto-congress-and-execution-unto-the-executive-the-supreme-court-rebalances-constitutional-power">three</a> <a href="https://fedsoc.org/conferences/2022-national-lawyers-convention#agenda-item-regulatory-elephants-in-statutory-mouse-holes">different</a> <a href="https://fedsoc.org/conferences/2022-national-lawyers-convention#agenda-item-the-major-questions-doctrine-west-virginia-v-epa">panels</a> touting the so-called “major questions doctrine,” a judicially created doctrine that gives the Court and its current Republican-appointed majority a <a href="https://www.vox.com/23180634/supreme-court-rule-of-law-abortion-voting-rights-guns-epa">virtually limitless veto power</a> over federal regulations that they do not like.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hndfVH">
As several conference attendees told me, the fact that so much of the conference was backward-looking — cheering past victories rather than planning for new ones — is hardly a sign that the society’s power is diminished. After a round of generational victories, it’s normal to pause for a moment and regroup before beginning a new offensive. For the moment, however, the conference offered only the narrowest window into where the Supreme Court might go next.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yhrpEk">
The second conference-within-a-conference emphasized the conservative legal movement’s cultural grievances. All four of the conference’s “showcase” panels — large sessions that were scheduled alongside no other events so that everyone could attend them — were a part of this. These four showcase panels emphasized complaints that Federalist Society conservatives often feel out of place at <a href="https://fedsoc.org/conferences/2022-national-lawyers-convention#agenda-item-showcase-panel-ii-the-mission-of-law-schools">law schools</a>, at <a href="https://fedsoc.org/conferences/2022-national-lawyers-convention#agenda-item-showcase-panel-iii-lawyers-the-adversarial-system-and-social-justice">large law firms</a>, inside <a href="https://fedsoc.org/conferences/2022-national-lawyers-convention#agenda-item-showcase-panel-iv-the-regulatory-power-of-bar-associations">bar associations</a>, and in the <a href="https://fedsoc.org/conferences/2022-national-lawyers-convention#agenda-item-showcase-panel-i-the-legal-profession-and-constitutional-culture">legal profession more broadly</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9bV0mA">
But the thing about these sorts of grievances — which frequently mirror broader conservative complaints about a so-called “cancel culture” — is that, even if you agree that such cultural complaints cry out for a solution, these are rarely the sort of problems that lawyers are capable of solving.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5n5Hk6">
A conservative law student who is unpopular with their classmates cannot seek an injunction requiring their fellow students to like them. Nor should a conservative lawyer be able to successfully sue their colleagues for ostracizing them. The First Amendment places <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/5/31/23149183/supreme-court-texas-social-media-ruling-netchoice-paxton">strict limits on the law’s ability to shape culture</a>, and it simply isn’t possible for the government to force people to change their minds about anything.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fd87yU">
There is also a very real tension between these two conferences, though the Federalist Society itself does not seem aware of it. If members of the Federalist Society feel isolated in their jobs or at their schools, they should consider that the policy victories their organization touted in its first conference drive many lawyers and law students to resent Federalist Society colleagues who celebrate those victories.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oCL4D6">
It is asking a lot, for example, for members of the society to expect to be welcomed with enthusiasm by their women colleagues — after the society’s justices just <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf">seized control of those women’s uteruses</a>.
</p>
<h3 id="1yTq3b">
The Federalist Society craves acceptance from elite institutions
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="011iXU">
The Federalist Society knows how to hold a grudge.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="I5FMoT">
In 1987, in a bipartisan 58-42 vote, the Senate voted to reject conservative Judge Robert Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Thirty-five years later, the Federalist Society is still bitter. Indeed, this year’s convention concluded with an hourlong “<a href="https://fedsoc.org/conferences/2022-national-lawyers-convention#agenda-item-2022-hon-robert-h-bork-memorial-lecture">Hon. Robert H. Bork Memorial Lecture</a>,” in which federal appellate Judge A. Raymond Randolph compared Bork to Albert Einstein.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ArFUct">
“One of the Democrats’ main attacks was that Judge Bork was out of the legal mainstream,” Randolph lamented, before claiming that attack “has no intellectual content,” that it “tells us nothing about truth,” and proclaiming that Einstein “was out of the scientific mainstream, and thank God he was.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RzfLgT">
Randolph’s rage centered on the fact that Bork was judged not on the basis of his exceptional intellectual accomplishments, but instead on how his far-right political views would lead him to reshape the law (among many other things, Bork wrote in 1963 that federal legislation banning whites-only lunch counters is rooted in a “<a href="https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/files/new-republic.pdf">principle of unsurpassed ugliness</a>”).
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1JHTfW">
When Bork was up for confirmation, Randolph decried, “it didn’t matter that the Supreme Court had never reversed any of Bob’s judicial opinions.” Or that <em>The Antitrust Paradox</em>, a book authored by Bork, “had by that time defined the mainstream of antitrust law.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="prIyMH">
Randolph’s defense of Bork was <a href="https://fedsoc.org/conferences/2022-national-lawyers-convention#agenda-item-showcase-panel-i-the-legal-profession-and-constitutional-culture">echoed by other Federalist Society speakers</a>, including Northwestern University law professor John McGinnis, who railed against opponents of Bork’s confirmation who deemed the judge unfit for the Supreme Court despite the fact that he “had been Solicitor General of the United States, a professor at Yale Law School, and author of the most influential book on antitrust law in the history of the subject.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GODKon">
Bork was, indeed, one of the conservative legal movement’s greatest intellects. He was one of the most significant — <a href="https://www.vox.com/22348385/supreme-court-ncaa-alston-football-basketball-march-madness-college-sports-antitrust">quite possibly the most significant</a> — antitrust scholars in American history. The conservative legal movement sent America its best mind, and the Senate took one look at his conservatism and said “no thanks.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="g9frUe">
The fact that the Federalist Society still seethes over this lost political fight, more than three decades later, is a microcosm for the need for respect and acceptance from elite institutions that animates so much of the society’s rhetoric.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ilJSlr">
In a showcase panel about “<a href="https://fedsoc.org/conferences/2022-national-lawyers-convention#agenda-item-showcase-panel-ii-the-mission-of-law-schools">The Mission of Law Schools</a>,” for example, Northwestern law professor Joshua Kleinfeld claimed that “cancellations” on law school campuses are “just the tip of a very, very, very big iceberg.” “Something momentous is happening,” Kleinfeld warned, which has destroyed law schools’ commitment to “open inquiry based on argument and evidence.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MALJQT">
And this culture has spread past law schools, at least according to the Federalist Society <a href="https://fedsoc.org/conferences/2022-national-lawyers-convention#agenda-item-showcase-panel-iii-lawyers-the-adversarial-system-and-social-justice">panel on the culture of large law firms</a>. There, panelists complained that, as Supreme Court advocate Kannon Shanmugam put it, “there are two types of law firms: liberal and more liberal in terms of the makeup of the lawyers who work there.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WOeewV">
One frustrating thing about the conference, at least for an observer who does not share the society’s viewpoint, is that many of the speakers on these panels seemed to just assume that forces like “cancel culture” are serious problems and that there was no need to justify that claim. So it was often difficult to pin down what, exactly, had been done to these lawyers to spark their indignation, and what problem, exactly, they might want to solve. And when a few panelists did try to provide evidence for their broad claims, the evidence was quite thin.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2L4F7N">
Kleinfeld, for example, offered only two anecdotes to support his warnings of a giant iceberg, one of which didn’t even involve a law school. Specifically, he claimed that a single college freshman on an unnamed campus was harassed and stalked by his classmates after he expressed the view that women tend to have different career preferences than men for genetic reasons. And he also told a tale about an unnamed law professor at an unnamed law school, who allegedly was pressured to take early retirement after students falsely accused him of making racist statements in class.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OebgzF">
Meanwhile, the task of quantifying large law firms’ excessive liberalism fell to former Solicitor General Paul Clement, who argued that, at least in the most high-profile, most politically charged cases heard by the Supreme Court, the nation’s largest law firms are reluctant to file amicus briefs on behalf of conservative political causes.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4rem2F">
Clement researched the Supreme Court’s recent anti-abortion case <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/dobbs-v-jackson-womens-health-organization/"><em>Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization</em></a><em> </em>(2022) and found that 24 of the nation’s 100 largest law firms filed amicus briefs on the pro-abortion side, while none of the 100 filed anti-abortion briefs. Similarly, in <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1530_n758.pdf"><em>West Virginia v. EPA</em></a> (2022), the case striking down part of the EPA’s ability to regulate power generation, Clement claimed that four of the nation’s largest firms filed a brief on the Biden administration’s side, while none supported the conservative movement’s position.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="s8Tztb">
It’s worth acknowledging that large law firms are hardly the sort of employers where economically conservative lawyers — as opposed to socially conservative lawyers — will feel unwelcome. These firms, which typically charge hundreds of dollars an hour for even their most junior lawyers’ time, overwhelmingly serve wealthy individuals and corporations who do not want to be sued, taxed, or regulated. And an enormous amount of the work at these firms focuses on keeping these clients happy.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RgM6ut">
That said, I have little doubt that Kleinfeld, Shanmugam, and Clement are describing something real when they argue that cultural conservatives are in the minority within elite legal institutions. The reasons why, however, are hardly nefarious. They are largely driven by market forces, and by the political preferences of university students.
</p>
<h3 id="w4NPd8">
Young people overwhelmingly reject the Federalist Society’s values
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PnYglW">
In CNN’s exit polls of the 2022 election, voters with college degrees <a href="https://www.cnn.com/election/2022/exit-polls/national-results/house/0">preferred Democrats over Republicans by 10 points</a>. Voters under age 30 preferred Democrats by nearly 30 points. Admittedly, exit polls are often imperfect measures of public preferences, but various polls have shown that young people strongly favor Democrats <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2008/results/president/national-exit-polls.html">since at least 2008</a>. And one other indicator backs up the claim that college-educated young people are especially liberal: On many university campuses, Democrats ran up truly astounding margins in the most recent election.
</p>
<div id="jH3hBi">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" dir="ltr" lang="en">
I’ve been going through some of the college campus precincts this morning. This one at University of Michigan is indicative of why the work of youth organizing is so incredibly important. 93% voted for the Dem ticket. <a href="https://t.co/iEJRdDSyai">pic.twitter.com/iEJRdDSyai</a>
</p>
— Tom Bonier (<span class="citation" data-cites="tbonier">@tbonier</span>) <a href="https://twitter.com/tbonier/status/1591811922034593792?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 13, 2022</a>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="C9qHpp">
So, while Kleinfeld’s vague anecdotes about a single bullied student and a single retired professor tell us absolutely nothing about the culture of universities writ large, it is entirely believable that Kleinfeld and other conservatives on university campuses feel like they are part of an increasingly small minority.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FM4aLL">
And these trends impact employers no less than law schools.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XxpTQL">
The large law firms that Shanmugam and Clement spoke of at their panel are the sorts of firms that pay young associates outlandish amounts of money to work punishing hours for demanding clients. Many recent graduates enter these firms intending to leave as soon as their student loans are paid off. Others seek a few years of on-the-job training before moving on to more desirable work. At the most prestigious firms, <a href="https://www.chambers-associate.com/law-firms/how-many-associates-make-partner">only a tiny percentage of incoming associates make partner</a>, and the rest are often pushed out the door if they do not leave voluntarily.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lrn83l">
These firms’ business models, in other words, depend on a constant churn of young lawyers, recruited from an overwhelmingly left-leaning cohort of recent law graduates. To sustain this model, the biggest firms must compete with each other to build a work culture that will attract highly educated young people — a demographic that is heavily Democratic.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UGsR8D">
So there is a name for the force that is driving Big Law’s culture to the left — and <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/11/18/22783108/federalist-society-capitalism-woke-corporations-milton-friedman-supreme-court-judiciary-judges">the name of that force is “capitalism.”</a> Successful employers build workplace cultures that will allow them to hire talented people and retain employees who perform well.
</p>
<h3 id="Nr8hTA">
What, exactly, does the Federalist Society plan to do about its cultural grievances?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KWCrMj">
For all of the society’s fears that they are unwelcome in elite legal institutions, they had few ideas that are likely to quell these fears. Sometimes they were quite open about this fact. At the end of his presentation about large law firms, for example, Clement conceded that “I think the problem is pretty glaring,” but “the solutions are much harder to find.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ORKrak">
He’s certainly not wrong about that. What, exactly, would a policy solution to the supposed problem that Clement identifies look like? Should lawyers at large firms be forced to represent clients they find abhorrent, and to make arguments that they believe would deeply harm their country? Should state bar regulators impose quotas on these firms, and mandate that a certain percentage of their partners must have voted for Donald Trump? These are the kinds of solutions that, even if they survived scrutiny under the First Amendment, could only spark even deeper resentment against conservatives.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HzT68M">
Similarly, what, exactly, should be done to change law schools? Should professors who teach from a left-leaning perspective be sanctioned or stripped of tenure? Or perhaps, fresh off the Supreme Court’s likely decision <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/10/31/23433183/supreme-court-affirmative-action-harvard-unc-race">ending race-conscious affirmative action</a> programs in university admissions, the Court could then mandate that law schools admit a critical mass of Republicans?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rOQJg6">
Changing culture is not easy, and people across the political spectrum who wish to shape an institution’s culture often struggle to make headway. The evidence on the effectiveness of the sort of workplace diversity trainings sometimes advocated by liberals, for example, <a href="https://hbr.org/2019/07/does-diversity-training-work-the-way-its-supposed-to">is mixed at best</a>. Universities and education policymakers have struggled for years to rein in the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2014/10/15/18088608/campus-sexual-assault-title-ix">culture of sexual assault that exists on many campuses</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jnGCIL">
That said, there are definitely some figures within the Federalist Society who favor draconian measures to try to shift culture. At last year’s Federalist Society conference, speakers proposed an <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/11/18/22783108/federalist-society-capitalism-woke-corporations-milton-friedman-supreme-court-judiciary-judges">array of far-right solutions</a> to what they described as the problem of “wokeness” in society — ranging from repealing the ban on discrimination on the basis of “race, sex, religion, and national origin,” to enacting laws requiring social media companies to publish speech they deem offensive, to a vague-but-ominous proposal to “wield in state legislative chambers some degree of power to <a href="https://fedsoc.org/conferences/2021-national-lawyers-convention#agenda-item-classrooms-curricula-and-the-law">punish our enemies</a> within the confines of the rule of law.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Rwc6zK">
Meanwhile, a few of the Federalist Society’s most powerful supporters openly embrace the kind of censorship and intimidation of liberal voices that our First Amendment forbids. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), a <a href="https://fedsoc.org/past-events?speaker=ron-desantis">frequent speaker at the society’s events</a>, recently signed legislation <a href="https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23310524/doc-044-order-granting-mot-for-prelim-inj.pdf">imposing a speech code on public university professors</a>. As a federal judge described the law in a decision striking it down, it “bans professors from expressing disfavored viewpoints in university classrooms while permitting unfettered expression of the opposite viewpoints” on various subjects relating to race, gender, and nationality.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LnB1QK">
Similarly, two of the Federalist Society’s justices, Thomas and Gorsuch, have called for the Court to overrule <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/376/254"><em>New York Times v. Sullivan</em></a> (1964), a fundament of American press freedom, and <a href="https://www.vox.com/22431044/neil-gorsuch-nihilism-supreme-court-voting-rights-lgbt-housing-obamacare-constitution">arguably the single most important First Amendment decision</a> in the Court’s history.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GwEoS0">
<em>New York Times</em> overturned a $500,000 verdict (just under $5 million in today’s dollars) that an Alabama court awarded to a Jim Crow official, ostensibly because the Times published a pro-civil rights advertisement that contained some minor factual errors. More broadly, <em>New York Times</em> ensured that public officials may not use malicious libel suits to target media outlets that criticize the government. Or who criticize officials like, say, Judge William Pryor.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KcBXma">
So the Federalist Society’s most powerful figures have some tools which they could use to force liberal institutions to show more outward respect to conservative ideas. It is certainly possible for an authoritarian government to twist culture into the conservative movement’s preferred shape, and Thomas and Gorsuch have laid out the first step toward doing so: strip the media of its First Amendment protections. After that, maybe they could do the same to law schools and law firms as well.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RbQ4FY">
But if the Federalist Society embraces some of these more aggressive policies, its members should not be surprised that the rest of the legal profession might resent them for it. Nor should they be surprised that so many lawyers, law professors, and law students <a href="https://www.vox.com/23180634/supreme-court-rule-of-law-abortion-voting-rights-guns-epa">resent them for what they have already done to American law</a>.
</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Democrats’ quietly effective strategy for defeating election deniers</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/LV5JYvzVwvKBJmgeFm33xf1soz8=/217x0:3684x2600/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71649091/GettyImages_1244781462a.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Newly elected Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes gives a speech in Phoenix, Arizona, on November 14. Fontes defeated Republican candidate Mark Finchem, who has claimed widespread election fraud in the state. | Jon Cherry/Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Inside the strategy that carried Democratic secretary of state candidates to victory.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EFoT1p">
Secretary of state races are normally dull affairs. Frequently buoyed to victory by whichever party wins at the top of the ticket, candidates for the posts that oversee the administration of elections traditionally haven’t been household names.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LNfDXC">
That all changed after 2020. Once Donald Trump began questioning the integrity of the presidential election — and then turned his fire on individual states’ electoral processes after he lost — it became clear that electoral administration was crucial to ensure a peaceful transfer of power.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ha9MMS">
“The 2020 election cycle really set at the center secretaries of state as the defenders of democracy,” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold told me. “And voters were paying attention.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1W9qfq">
Then came 2022. As record numbers of election deniers and conspiracy theorists began to run for key posts around the country this year, the urgency of electing sane, normal candidates was now existential. Threats to democracy began to take <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/18/us/politics/midterm-election-voters-democracy-poll.html">center</a> stage in <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/first-read/anger-minds-nbc-news-poll-finds-sky-high-interest-polarization-ahead-m-rcna53512">polling</a>, in <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/10/14/23404556/january-6-hearings">Congress’s investigation</a> into the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, and in President Joe Biden’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/11/2/23437820/biden-democracy-speech-election-deniers">pitch</a> to voters ahead of the midterm elections.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Zf7iBu">
But Griswold — and the small team at the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, which she chairs — were already developing a strategy to fight back, one they’d <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/21/us/politics/democrats-secretary-of-state-candidates-election-deniers.html">amplify through strong fundraising</a>, and by <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/27/democrats-in-key-secretary-of-state-races-00059106">outspending</a> right-wing opponents. They believed voter education, as well as plain and convincing messages that cast election-denying candidates as the extremists they were, would make it easier for moderate and independent voters to vote for Democrats, even if they didn’t vote Democratic up and down the ballot.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aojH29">
And they were right. DASS-backed candidates won every election in which they competed this year, including in key battleground states like Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, and Minnesota. Those wins happened as voters <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/11/14/23456270/midterm-elections-2022-results-questions-trump-inflation-democracy">rejected all but one</a> of the candidates aligned with the America First Secretary of State Coalition, a conspiracy theory-minded conservative group trying to win posts that would enable them to oversee elections in 2024.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DmMrHG">
Much of this stunning collapse of election deniers nationwide can be attributed to the work of Griswold, DASS, and the Democratic candidates. But, ultimately, the defeat of election deniers this year was up to the voters who turned out, and who surprised much of the political world with nuanced choices in these battleground states.
</p>
<h3 id="C8beu0">
How candidate messaging helped lay out clear stakes
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5RzEVR">
With a sour national mood and persistently high inflation, Democratic candidates in secretary of state races faced a challenge that other statewide candidates didn’t have. While gubernatorial and Senate hopefuls could talk about those kitchen-table issues and present their own plans to address them, secretaries of state have no power over taxes, crime, and immigration, limiting the platform they could run on.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="m5zOsO">
National headwinds added an additional layer of danger: Candidates had to overcome any negative associations the electorate might have with Democrats in a midterm year that was supposed to punish incumbents and the party in power. These candidates also had to define themselves clearly against their opponents while other statewide candidates were already swamping the airwaves with their own messages about democracy and voting rights, and in many cases, explain what the office even did to less engaged voters.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JtyThG">
“The one core message across all of the races was partly just explaining what a secretary of state is, the role of a secretary of state in elections, and raising awareness about this position in general,” Kim Rogers, the executive director of DASS, told me. Once voters had a better understanding of why the office mattered, the answer seemed simple to them.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ooTW2m">
Democratic candidates also found ways to connect the office to the greater frustration voters had with the status quo, like with inflation and the economy. Cisco Aguilar, the Democratic secretary of state-elect for the office in Nevada, told me that while he often spent time “literally being a civics teacher,” it was necessary to have those in-the-weeds conversations.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/3PKq91fhtxNH-bdI5xM7w1nMamw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24207411/GettyImages_1440122984.jpg"/> <cite>Mario Tama/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
Cisco Aguilar speaks at an SEIU union worker Election Day rally in Las Vegas, Nevada, on November 8.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="slQCmL">
“Once you educate them, you can say, ‘I understand your top issues are the education of your kids, your job, your small business, the safety of your community, and this is how the secretary of state’s office is responsible for making sure you have a voice in these issues.’”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OXNs8Y">
Aguilar also said he spent much of the 18-month campaign casting himself as the candidate of steadiness, and his opponent, Jim Marchant, the leader of the election denier coalition, as the candidate of chaos. He explained to voters how Nevada, and its elections, would have an impact on who the next president might be in 2024, and that an election conspiracist in charge of that process could lead to not just their disenfranchisement, but worsening conditions in their state and the nation.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DzP8uI">
“All communities, strong communities, are built by having people’s say, by making sure you have the greatest participation of the members of that community, and making sure people understood that their voices need to be heard,” he said. “Chaos is not good for any community. Chaos leads to turmoil. And when you have turmoil, it impacts the economy. It impacts people’s jobs. It impacts the education of kids.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3EVZyJ">
Adrian Fontes, the Democratic secretary of state-elect in Arizona, set out the stakes of his election in similar terms to voters. Facing the outspoken election denier and conspiracist Mark Finchem, Fontes went further in defining just how extreme his opponent was. During a DASS news conference earlier this week, Fontes described Finchem as being something worse than an election denier.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OgxZvM">
“We need to stop calling them election deniers, and start calling them authoritarians,” he said. “There’s a word in Spanish called negacionistas, which I think really describes them very, very well. These are people who negate the reality that exists out there. These are folks who do not believe in democracy, they do not believe in the American voter, and the power of the consent of the governed.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="d5tG5h">
I asked Fontes a bit more about why he uses this term, and how it helped him reach critical Latino voters, when we chatted earlier this week.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PZJg1e">
“My authentic self does not suffer bullshit very kindly,” he told me. “You’ve got to be truthful, you’ve got to be direct, and you’ve got to be honest; you owe it to the people to whom you are talking to be clear, and being clear sometimes means that you might bend somebody’s feelings a little bit.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ptEx5c">
By using the term election denier, Fontes felt that he was not “doing justice to our side of the fight,” because “by calling someone who is an authoritarian an election denier, that seems like a very politically correct way to get around conflict, to get around a direct attack against the anti-American sentiment.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IBkG6U">
That imperative also led him to fine-tune his campaign pitch to Latino and Hispanic voters in Arizona, who <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/10/12/key-facts-about-hispanic-eligible-voters-in-2022/">make up 25 percent</a> of the state’s electorate, by recognizing that a patriotic message aimed at English speakers wouldn’t translate easily to a cohort of citizens who have different shared experiences from Latin America.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uzjt1X">
In television and social media ads, he talked in Spanish in a collective sense about Arizonans knowing the importance of having a “voice and vote” because “we know just how easy it is to lose it” — “sabemos que tan facil es perderlo.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jytBm2">
“Hispanic Americans have a collective memory, and [that] includes the political tumult that Latin American nations have experienced over the last several decades, and over the last several generations. We know what it is to lose democracy, because we can identify with Venezuela, we can identify with Central American countries,” Fontes said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0hBCp2">
Bringing all of these various messages to voters were the tens of millions of dollars the candidates, and groups like End Citizens United, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/23/secretary-of-state-ivote-00058499">iVote</a>, and a DASS-affiliated PAC spent on television ads and face-to-face campaigning. DASS itself went from raising $4.5 million in all of 2021 (already $2 million more than what it had available in 2020) to over $25 million in the 2022 cycle. By October, Democratic secretary of state candidates and aligned outside groups were outspending Republicans <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/21/us/politics/democrats-secretary-of-state-candidates-election-deniers.html">57 to 1 in TV ads</a>; in third-quarter fundraising, the New York Times reported, Marchant in Nevada had raised $89,000, when Aguilar had raised $1.1 million.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/S1xzSxerZlvcZ5NUCTuE3iEcHQc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24207440/GettyImages_1244841580.jpg"/> <cite>Nick Hagen/Washington Post via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson points at the crowd at the Michigan Democrats post-midterms party in Detroit on November 8.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7JtQM3">
All this messaging worked — in Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, and Michigan, Democratic secretary of state candidates ran even with other statewide candidates, or overperformed. They won many races by larger margins than other Democrats in down-ballot contests. And most surprising — early exit polling in Arizona and Nevada, and across the country, showed that they were able to garner support from a large share of Republicans and independents.
</p>
<h3 id="sxHP0n">
Independents sealed Democratic victories
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lUfSNh">
That crossover support was crucial to victory.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Q3ttf9">
Both Arizona and Nevada are states where nonpartisan, independent voters make up just as large a share of voters, if not larger, than Republicans and Democrats alone. Victory in a statewide contest requires Democrats to not just hold their base, but win independent voters and some Republican support. Because economic concerns were top of mind for most of these voters, many politicians, strategists, pundits, and journalists questioned in the final days of the campaign whether a closing message focused on democracy and the “extreme” agenda of Republican candidates in swing states would resonate.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tZkrdb">
Exit <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2022-election/inflation-abortion-lead-list-voter-concerns-nbc-news-exit-poll-finds-rcna56258">polls</a>, and <a href="https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-abortion-biden-inflation-cf4dffe87a7c2fd1bdd58df0346e15dc">surveys</a> of voters, suggest that it did — especially in down-ballot races like secretary of state contests. In a new report on focus groups conducted in the weeks before the election, the progressive group <a href="https://navigatorresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Navigator-GBAO-Focus-Groups-11.06.2022.pdf">Navigator Research</a> found that among Democrats and independents, fear of Republican threats to democracy was a strong motivator: participants in their focus groups said they were voting “to stop Republicans” and feared Republicans “being batshit crazy.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="57SFqL">
Aguilar told me he knew that these underlying fears of Republican positions might be especially helpful in Nevada, where his opponent was advocating against the very popular early voting period and mail-in voting options that most Nevadans use to vote. He won by a bigger margin than either Catherine Cortez Masto, the Democratic senator who won reelection, or Joe Lombardo, the Republican challenger who won the governor’s race — and won Washoe County, the state’s more educated, more independent, and more purple swing district, by a wider margin than both Cortez Masto and Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak, who lost reelection.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="e9dFVr">
Fontes had similar results in Arizona, winning more votes than either Democratic candidate for governor or Senate in the state’s biggest swing county, Maricopa. Meanwhile Griswold, in Colorado, wasn’t running against an election denier, but still won by more this year than when she ran for her first term in 2018, a “blue wave” year.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="soge43">
“The big headline from Colorado is voters were very concerned about democracy. They showed up. They rejected extremism, both in the primary and in the general. And we saw overwhelming support that we really have not seen,” she said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zAuyJz">
Now these candidates have to show those independents and Republicans they won this time that they will live up to their word. They’ll have their chance come 2024; for candidates like Griswold, that will simply mean continuing to run elections as they always have.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3SiH7s">
</p></li>
<li><strong>The spectacular ongoing implosion of crypto’s biggest star, explained</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="An image of Sam Bankman-Fried’s face, blurry, behind the shards of a bitcoin." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/KCegKWaWPEJfp0FZgFyKlOBaQ_o=/240x0:1680x1080/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71611788/FTX_implosion_blur_v2.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Dion Lee/Vox, Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried have experienced a shocking downfall.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Lp4hzm">
<a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/23458837/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-sbf-downfall-explained">Sam Bankman-Fried</a>, one of the crypto industry’s biggest stars, has said a lot of things over the years. Most recently, it’s been a lot of “<a href="https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/status/1590709166515310593?s=20&amp;t=q1wRjDadQL1SxcVmzhC0Qg">I’m sorry</a>,” “<a href="https://twitter.com/sbf_ftx/status/1590709166515310593">I fucked up</a>,” “<a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23462333/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-cryptocurrency-effective-altruism-crypto-bahamas-philanthropy">fuck regulators,</a>” and lots of <a href="https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/status/1591989554881658880?s=20&amp;t=0Ykb9BjLtbOFt8sQmQTzkA">weird</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/status/1592958070782857216?s=20&amp;t=0Ykb9BjLtbOFt8sQmQTzkA">tweets</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="C3EQz6">
Before that, he said he <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2022-election/crypto-billionaire-says-spend-record-breaking-1-billion-2024-election-rcna30351">might spend</a> as much as $1 billion on politics in 2024. He said he had a lot of <a href="https://www.ftxpolicy.com/posts/possible-digital-asset-industry-standards">ideas for policing</a> the crypto industry and <a href="https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2022-08-12/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-political-donations">using his crypto-fueled fortune for good</a>. He said he’d be fine <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/22/sam-bankman-fried-rescues-crypto-lenders-blockfi-voyager.html">bailing out some crypto companies</a> in trouble as crypto winter hit over the summer. All of these claims are now in limbo thanks to another thing he said on November 7: that his crypto exchange, FTX, was “fine.” It was not. Instead, the next day, the exchange imploded. By November 11, the company had <a href="https://twitter.com/FTX_Official/status/1591071832823959552">filed for bankruptcy</a>, and Bankman-Fried resigned as CEO. The company’s <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-11-14/ftx-s-balance-sheet-was-bad?sref=qYiz2hd0">balance sheet has been revealed to be a disaster</a>. FTX’s new CEO — who helped manage Enron <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/updates/enron-scandal-summary/">after its 2001 collapse</a> — <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-17/here-are-the-craziest-parts-from-the-new-ftx-bankruptcy-filing?sref=qYiz2hd0">said</a> that he has never in his career “seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such complete absence of trustworthy financial information.” The situation, again, coming from the guy who dealt with the Enron fallout, is “unprecedented.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QZtboQ">
“It’s incredible how quickly these things can spiral out of control,” Molly White, a software engineer and prominent crypto critic behind the website <a href="https://web3isgoinggreat.com/">Web3 is Going Just Great</a>, told me.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VoTwSo">
Whether or not you’re a <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/23071245/bitcoin-price-crypto-ethereum-nfts-defi-stablecoin">crypto person</a>, chances are you’ve come into some sort of contact with FTX and its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried — better known as SBF — in some fashion. He’s partnered with big names, such as soon-to-be-divorced couple <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/23148474/crypto-celebrities-ftx-kim-kardashian-larry-david">Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen</a>, to spread the crypto gospel. He co-hosted Crypto Bahamas with medium name Anthony Scaramucci; figures such as Bill Clinton and Tony Blair attended. (Disclosure: This August, Bankman-Fried’s philanthropic family foundation, Building a Stronger Future, awarded Vox’s Future Perfect a <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/1/7/21020439/support-future-perfect">grant</a> for a 2023 reporting project. That project is now on pause.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dqke5s">
FTX ran a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH5-rSxilxo">memorable ad</a> featuring Larry David during the Super Bowl encouraging people to jump into crypto, even if they didn’t really get it. He bought the naming rights to the Miami Heat’s arena; <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-08/ftx-takeover-leaves-a-ton-of-sports-sponsorships-in-limbo?sref=qYiz2hd0">whether that name will soon have to change is uncertain</a>. Bankman-Fried was a major donor to <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2020/11/05/cryptocurrency-ceo-donated-second-largest-amount-to-joe-bidens-campaign/">Joe Biden’s presidential campaign</a> and again in the 2022 midterms, largely in primaries. <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/10/sam-bankman-fried-crypto-ftx-2022-midterms/671823/">He slowed political spending down</a> in the election cycle’s final weeks. He had positioned himself as the “acceptable” face of crypto to Washington, DC, policymakers, and the public.
</p>
<div class="c-float-right">
<div id="76Wclj">
<div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ifLU7b">
In a matter of days, his empire has exploded in a rather spectacular fashion. Thanks to a <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/11/02/divisions-in-sam-bankman-frieds-crypto-empire-blur-on-his-trading-titan-alamedas-balance-sheet/">leak</a> about the financial health of a trading firm he founded, Alameda Research, and some savvy maneuvers from a competing exchange, Binance, investors began to pull their money out of FTX en masse. FTT, a token the company issues, plunged in value. FTX was forced to seek a bailout.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="m5TvzF">
The competitor that helped orchestrate FTX’s demise said it would buy it and <a href="https://twitter.com/binance/status/1590449161069268992?s=20&amp;t=SoFGmQDkSDq2wRnaeX025w">then backed out</a> after briefly kicking FTX’s tires. Billions of dollars <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-08/sbf-net-worth-is-eviscerated-in-days-with-binance-set-to-buy-ftx?sref=qYiz2hd0">have been wiped from</a> Bankman-Fried’s net worth. It’s still not entirely clear what happened, why it happened so quickly, or what will happen to FTX or its customers, though the picture emerging is an ugly one. Regulatory <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-probes-ftx-over-handling-client-funds-bloomberg-news-2022-11-09/">probes are underway</a>, and a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/11/16/ftx-sam-bankman-fried-hearings/">Congressional hearing on the matter</a> is set for next month. It appears that FTX is facing an <a href="https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-news-today-11-09-2022/card/ftx-needs-8-billion-bankman-fried-tells-investors-2RSa5oqZyZZ5YrPLuZuL">$8 billion shortfall</a> and <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/15/ftx-says-could-have-over-1-million-creditors-in-new-bankruptcy-filing.html">could have 1 million creditors affected</a> by its bankruptcy proceedings.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="z7A92S">
John J. Ray III, the aforementioned new CEO of FTX, said in a <a href="https://twitter.com/FTX_Official/status/1591071832823959552">statement</a> on November 11 that Chapter 11 is “appropriate to provide FTX Group the opportunity to assess its situation and develop a process to maximize recoveries for stakeholders.” Bankman-Fried, who has said he’s intent on finding ways to help customers who can’t get their money out of the exchange, was to remain on in the transition, though the company has sought to distance itself from him. A<strong> </strong><a href="https://twitter.com/FTX_Official/status/1592985707819462657?s=20&amp;t=6t1iHV1j9u1XpnrhIw0yqw">tweet</a> on November 16 says he has “no ongoing role” at FTX, FTX US, or Alameda, and “does not speak on their behalf.”<strong> </strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1OJz1x">
That came after <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23462333/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-cryptocurrency-effective-altruism-crypto-bahamas-philanthropy">Vox published a series of DMs with reporter Kelsey Piper</a>. During that conversation, among other things, he claimed regulators — who he was previously courting — “make everything worse,” acknowledged a lot of his talk about ethics was a front, and said “each individual decision” he made “seemed fine and I didn’t realize how big their sum was until the end.”<strong> </strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LK6r6F">
He also claimed he would have been able to make customers fully whole within a month had FTX not filed for bankruptcy (without offering up any explanation how), and seemed to be holding on to some sort of hope he would still be able to turn things around. “A month ago I was one of the world’s greatest fundraisers,” he wrote in the DM. “Now I’m the fallen wreckage of one but there’s a thing about being fallen — there are people who know what it’s like, and who want to do for someone else what nobody did for them.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5DX5hQ">
Despite Bankman-Fried’s borderline delusional beliefs about a turnaround, it’s<strong> </strong>hard to see this ending well. Some 130 entities, including FTX, FTX US, and Alameda Research, are involved in the bankruptcy<strong> </strong>proceedings.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8C9Gaa">
In a <a href="https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/status/1591089317300293636">series of tweets</a> on November 11, Bankman-Fried reiterated that he was sorry. “I’m piecing together all of the details, but I was shocked to see things unravel the way they did earlier this week,” he wrote. The picture coming together of how his operations were run reveals the unraveling was perhaps not so shocking after all.
</p>
<div class="c-float-right">
<aside id="RmYoGD">
<q>“Sam went from being the darling of the regulators to suddenly being a pariah, and it happened in a matter of what? Three days?”</q>
</aside>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3bvsRe">
Crypto has seen a series of blowups over the past decade, and this is among the biggest — the industry’s <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/08/bear_stearns200808-2">Bear Stearns moment</a>, in a way.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fNXq5G">
“Sam went from being the darling of the regulators to suddenly being a pariah, and it happened in a matter of what? Three days?” said Douglas Borthwick, chief business officer at INX, a crypto trading platform. “Astounding.”
</p>
<h3 id="brQHAe">
FTX’s shocking implosion, explained-ish
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MwmWzU">
In some ways, the story of what happened here is a bit of a classic one — one competitor (Binance) saw the opportunity to try to kill off another (FTX), so it did.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="beTYSA">
“This is two crypto exchange founders doing economic warfare, and one clearly won and one clearly lost,” said David Hoffman, the co-owner of <em>Bankless</em>, a podcast and newsletter in the crypto space.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Nmxdh3">
How it was able to do so is a little complicated to unpack.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fJKodd">
Changpeng Zhao, a Chinese-born entrepreneur with Canadian citizenship who is more commonly referred to as CZ, launched Binance in 2017 and has <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/binance-became-the-biggest-cryptocurrency-exchange-without-licenses-or-headquarters-thats-coming-to-an-end-11636640029">since grown it</a> to be the biggest crypto exchange in the world. Bankman-Fried launched Alameda Research, a quantitative trading firm focused on digital assets, in 2017, and then FTX, an exchange, in 2019. Bankman-Fried stepped away from running the day-to-day at Alameda, but the two entities <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-27/sam-bankman-fried-s-alameda-research-draws-increasing-attention?sref=qYiz2hd0">remained very much connected</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7f90wv">
Up until very recently, the story was that FTX and Alameda were in decent shape. FTX <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/21/ftx-in-talks-to-raise-1-billion-at-valuation-of-about-32-billion.html">had a $32 billion valuation</a>, its smaller FTX US division (that’s in line with US regulations and doesn’t allow nearly as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/23/us/politics/crypto-billionaires.html">much risky behavior as regular FTX does</a>) was pegged at <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/26/coinbase-rival-ftx-us-valued-at-8-billion-in-first-funding-round.html">$8 billion</a>, and Alameda <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-14/trading-firm-alameda-research-powers-ftx-ceo-sam-bankman-fried-s-crypto-empire?sref=qYiz2hd0">had brought in a $1 billion profit</a> in a single year. Things have since fallen apart very fast.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hqBuRQ">
On November 2, Ian Allison at CoinDesk <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/11/02/divisions-in-sam-bankman-frieds-crypto-empire-blur-on-his-trading-titan-alamedas-balance-sheet/">published a leak</a> revealing that much of Alameda’s $14.6 billion in assets were parked in a digital token created by FTX, called FTT. (In crypto, <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/crypto-token.asp">tokens</a> are digital assets built on a blockchain.) Among other perks, FTT tokens give holders a discount on FTX trading fees. But the tokens were, like a lot of crypto tokens, kind of a made-up thing where their value was derived in believing there was value. “They printed this token out of thin air, endowed it with some valuation, and then Alameda used it as collateral,” said Nic Carter, partner at venture capital firm Castle Island Ventures.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gaLLY8">
Bloomberg’s Tracy Alloway <a href="https://twitter.com/tracyalloway/status/1590373675014189056?s=20&amp;t=eKru_Hzzt4om43rpioBr2w">used the example</a> of a Beanie Baby you buy for $5 and then sell for $20 because you make a price guide saying that’s what he’s worth. In this case, FTX was making the Beanie Baby itself — as in issuing the FTT token for free — then buying some of the tokens back for whatever amount. It was then able to say the token was worth that amount and do <a href="https://twitter.com/tracyalloway/status/1590374495336157186?s=20&amp;t=eKru_Hzzt4om43rpioBr2w">business with it</a>, by, for example, using it as collateral for a loan.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Dzq737">
The CoinDesk leak and revelations that it had so much money in FTT prompted questions about Alameda’s financial health and concerns that a fall in the token’s value could <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/09/technology/ftx-binance-crypto.html">cause real problems for both the trading firm and FTX</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vq0Yuj">
Days later, on November 6, Zhao <a href="https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1589283421704290306?s=20&amp;t=F6-_1bHwbixdB9vP90XqDQ">said on Twitter</a> that Binance would be liquidating its FTT holdings, which it received after exiting its stake in FTX last year. (Binance was an investor in FTX, with <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-behind-ftxs-fall-battling-billionaires-failed-bid-save-crypto-2022-11-10/">Zhao buying a 20 percent stake</a> in the exchange soon after its launch, according to Reuters.) He said Binance received $2 billion in tokens, including some in the FTX token, at the time, but due to “recent revelations that have come to light,” they were offloading the FTT.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BWHaoR">
The whole thing sort of spiraled from there. Alameda’s CEO, Caroline Ellison, <a href="https://twitter.com/carolinecapital/status/1589264375042707458">insisted</a> Alameda was fine and <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-08/crypto-exchange-ftx-s-token-tumbles-below-22-barrier-amid-spat?utm_source=google&amp;utm_medium=bd&amp;cmpId=google&amp;sref=qYiz2hd0">offered to buy</a> Binance’s FTT at $22 a token, around where it was at the time. (Ellison is an interesting character, and <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/2022/11/18/queen-caroline-the-risk-loving-29-year-old-embroiled-in-the-ftx-collapse/?sh=5e17c8ae791f">Forbes has a good profile of her here</a>.)<strong> </strong>Bankman-Fried claimed FTX’s assets were fine. Investors didn’t believe them.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MkJMiu">
FTT’s value <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ftx-token/">plunged</a> and is now under $2,<strong> </strong>holders made a mad dash to sell, and customers started trying to pull their money out of FTX altogether. The exchange suffered from a liquidity crunch, meaning it ran out of money. By November 8, it became clear that this was all sort of the “this is fine” meme but the fire had engulfed the building and everyone in it. Bankman-Fried <a href="https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/status/1590012124864348160?s=20&amp;t=SoFGmQDkSDq2wRnaeX025w">announced</a> that FTX had reached a “strategic transaction” to hand FTX over to Binance (but not FTX US). Zhao <a href="https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1590013613586411520">said</a> Binance had signed a non-binding letter of intent to buy FTX, pending due diligence. The non-binding part wound up being important as <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/11/09/binance-is-strongly-leaning-toward-scrapping-ftx-rescue-takeover-after-first-glance-at-books-source/">reports soon began to emerge</a> that Binance might back out, which it eventually did.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RjpBaF">
“As a result of corporate due diligence, as well as the latest news reports regarding mishandled customer funds and alleged US agency investigations, we have decided that we will not pursue the potential acquisition of FTX.com,” Binance said in a <a href="https://twitter.com/binance/status/1590449161069268992?s=20&amp;t=IKx1x0QoQGA4EUw48Xz6Rg">series of tweets</a>. “In the beginning, our hope was to be able to support FTX’s customers to provide liquidity, but the issues are beyond our control or ability to help.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xvkHVO">
In a November 8 <a href="https://twitter.com/WClementeIII/status/1590107340317294593?s=20&amp;t=hTmmDiw06VGPlQ3sfV6DCg">letter to investors</a>, which include SoftBank, Tiger Global, and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Bankman-Fried said he was “sorry” he’d been hard to contact amid all the drama and that the “details are still being hashed out” in the Binance deal — a deal that he noted was non-binding and, ultimately, would soon be defunct. “Our first priority is to protect customers and the industry; that’s been guiding what we do,” he wrote.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HFH42G">
On the morning of November 9, Zhao <a href="https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1590351182513729544?s=46&amp;t=6j4wZdSy1YXeTWtKI3V92w">tweeted out a note</a> he’d sent to the Binance team saying he “did not master plan this or anything related to it” and that he had “very little knowledge of the internal state of things at FTX” before Bankman-Fried called asking for help. (To be sure, his <a href="https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1589283421704290306?s=20&amp;t=F6-_1bHwbixdB9vP90XqDQ">tweet earlier in the week</a> indicated he had a hunch otherwise.) Semafor <a href="https://www.semafor.com/article/11/08/2022/before-deal-with-rival-ftx-scoured-wall-street-silicon-valley-billionaires-for-1-billion-lifeline">reported</a> on November 8 that FTX had tried to get a bailout from Silicon Valley and Wall Street investors before resorting to Binance; many of FTX’s investors reportedly <a href="https://www.theinformation.com/articles/ftx-venture-investors-fear-total-wipeout-in-binance-rescue-deal">say they were blindsided by the deal</a>.
</p>
<div class="c-float-right">
<aside id="kLUI44">
<q>“Clearly something was very awry”</q>
</aside>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DRTrkl">
“Binance saw something at FTX, they realized there was a vulnerability — we don’t know what it was yet — and realized they could take them out, which they did. It was really an incredible strategic move,” Carter said. “For Sam to sell to his literally biggest competitor, it definitely is a tough pill to swallow, so clearly something was very awry.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Ck0hvI">
<a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-behind-ftxs-fall-battling-billionaires-failed-bid-save-crypto-2022-11-10/">This wasn’t the beginning</a> of Zhao’s and Bankman-Fried’s simmering rivalry — the former didn’t love the latter’s policy outreach in the US — but it was the first time it had boiled over in such a big way. The potential deal signaled a detente, but now, it appears the hostilities remain. “At some point I might have more to say about a particular sparring partner, so to speak,” Bankman-Fried <a href="https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/status/1590709197502812160?s=20&amp;t=ML9gOqv79mRDvzcyiGS3Ww">tweeted</a> on November 10 in an apparent reference to Zhao. “But you know, glass houses. So for now, all I’ll say is: well played; you won.”
</p>
<h3 id="LItHMx">
There are still some unknowns here, though the knowns are pretty wild
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gg4CO8">
In a call with investors on November 9,<strong> </strong>first reported by <a href="https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-news-today-11-09-2022/card/ftx-needs-8-billion-bankman-fried-tells-investors-2RSa5oqZyZZ5YrPLuZuL">the Wall Street Journal</a>, Bankman-Fried told them he needed $8 billion to cover all of the requests customers were making to withdraw their money. <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/ontario-teachers-pension-plan-writes-down-ftx-investment-to-zero-1.6158854">Several</a> of FTX’s investors <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/09/sequoia-capital-marks-its-ftx-investment-down-to-zero-dollars/">have written down</a> their investments in FTX to $0, meaning they think it’s worthless.<strong> </strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dEhijy">
Since things began to fall apart in early November, there’s been quite a bit of <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/ftx-collapse-binance-crypto-deal/">speculation</a> as to what happened. Many people I spoke with openly wondered where the original leak to CoinDesk had come from. <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-behind-ftxs-fall-battling-billionaires-failed-bid-save-crypto-2022-11-10/">Reuters reported</a> on November 10<strong> </strong>that Bankman-Fried had transferred at least $4 billion in funds to Alameda to prop the firm up after it had suffered losses, a portion of which were customer deposits. He reportedly didn’t tell other FTX executives about it because he was nervous it would leak.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tuu8rK">
The long and short of it is that when you give your money to a crypto exchange, you are supposed to be able to get it back when you want to. That means “a client fund needs to be segregated, whether that’s dollars or whether that’s crypto,” Borthwick said. And if the exchange isn’t holding onto the client funds but is instead lending them or trading them (<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-11-09/bankman-fried-s-ftx-had-a-death-spiral-before-binance-deal?sref=qYiz2hd0">as Matt Levine at Bloomberg points out</a>, banks, for example, lend customer deposits), then it runs the risk of not having the money to hand back to clients, especially when the clients come asking for the money all at once. In a tweet on November 10, Bankman-Fried <a href="https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/status/1590709171338776577?s=20&amp;t=QVhPzE1Goh1dQnI4jDN_kA">insisted</a> that FTX has a “total market value of assets/collateral higher than client deposits,” but that’s not the same as liquidity — he’s saying FTX still has that customer money, they just can’t get it out of the things it’s in.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FGEE3l">
On November 12, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/0c2a55b6-d34c-4685-8a8d-3c9628f1f185">the Financial Times published</a> a copy of FTX’s balance sheet dated two days earlier that was, to put it plainly, bonkers. It revealed that much of FTX’s assets were in venture capital investments that weren’t liquid and crypto tokens that were, as FT noted, not widely traded and that, as Bloomberg’s Levine explained, were sort of “magic beans” that FTX had made up. The balance sheet also listed a negative $8 billion entry labeled “hidden, poorly internally labeled ‘<span class="citation" data-cites="fiat">@fiat</span>’ account” and a $7 million holding called “TRUMPLOSE.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sgtAjI">
Bankman-Fried has tried to offer up some explanations, though he has<strong> </strong>acknowledged he is still “<a href="https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/status/1590709172936798208?s=20&amp;t=QVhPzE1Goh1dQnI4jDN_kA">fleshing out every detail</a>” of what happened and that he believes he “fucked up twice,” including “poor internal labeling of bank-related accounts.” It’s also unclear how many of his claims can be believed at this point.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4Y9PRt">
“In a very real way, SBF did this to himself, and its impacts will be felt across the ecosystem even by those trying to make a real difference,” said Scott Moore, the co-founder of Gitcoin, a project for building and funding Web3 open source infrastructure, referring to other projects in the space around areas like decentralized finance and public works.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="O3Fzqb">
Alex Svanevik, CEO of blockchain analytics platform Nansen, said that whatever the case, it’s clear FTX was not as transparent as it should have been about what it was doing with assets and deposits. “At some point, because of the situation with the FTT price [falling] and the information that Alameda had these positions that were collateralized with the FTT token and all of these things, it translated to a bank run on FTX,” Svanevik said, referring to the colloquial term for when a critical mass of customers removes their money from a financial institution over solvency fears. “The great irony is that of course SBF was the guy who was in Washington trying to engage with regulators, and it looks like he didn’t have his own house in order.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wDVkjB">
What happened is not entirely different from what transpired when crypto lender Celsius <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-14/crypto-lender-celsius-files-for-bankruptcy-in-cash-crunch?sref=qYiz2hd0">filed for bankruptcy</a> earlier this year or when crypto broker <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/layer2/2022/07/12/behind-voyagers-fall-crypto-broker-acted-like-a-bank-went-bankrupt/">Voyager</a> or another crypto lender, <a href="https://blockworks.co/how-blockfi-went-from-tech-unicorn-to-crypto-burnout/">BlockFi</a>, went under.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0DMVro">
“People park money with these different entities and then trust these entities with having control over the funds, and on the back end, these entities are doing frankly irresponsible things with customers’ deposits,” Svanevik said. It causes problems because crypto’s very volatile, so valuations can fluctuate quickly and make it riskier than more traditional assets.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="99m2Dq">
Compounding everything is that when some crypto entities fell apart earlier this year, Bankman-Fried offered to <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/10/20/customers-of-bankrupt-crypto-lender-voyager-could-recover-72-of-their-funds-if-ftx-sale-is-approved/">step in</a> to try to <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/09/08/three-senior-executives-jump-from-blockfi-ahead-of-ftx-acquisition-sources/">save some of them</a>. Now, he’s the one that needs help, and it’s not clear what will happen with any of the deals he made to help out others when things were still supposedly good at FTX. “I think it’s actually possible that none of those deals are consummated,” Carter said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eQgfxw">
FTX’s downfall has <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/16/genesis-lending-unit-halts-withdrawals-in-aftermath-of-ftx-collapse.html">caused contagion across other players in the crypto industry</a>, meaning one failure <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2022/11/17/crypto-exchanges-binance-and-okx-suspend-support-for-solana-versions-of-usdt-usdc-stablecoins/">causes disruptions at other organizations</a>. BlockFi, which FTX had <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/ftx-signs-deal-to-bail-out-crypto-lender-blockfi-with-option-to-buy-it-for-up-to-240-million-2022-07-01">inked a bailout agreement</a> with over the summer, is again in trouble.<strong> </strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pVZj4u">
“The last several months, FTX was coming out as the savior of the industry and trying to help others,” said Reena Aggarwal, a professor of finance at Georgetown. “Could there be another white knight that shows up to help FTX? Who knows.” It appears no new white knight is in sight.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vuqGsB">
“If it was a regulated bank, the Fed would have stepped in, but it’s not,” Borthwick, whose own exchange runs entirely within the lines of US securities laws, said.<strong> </strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="11rk7q">
Zhao has sort of taken Bankman-Fried’s place as the voice of crypto and the industry’s savior. He <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/16/binance-ceo-crypto-will-be-fine-announces-industry-recovery-fund.html">has said</a> the sector “will be fine” and is trying to set up a recovery fund to help people in the arena. Still, it seems unlikely he’s interested in giving Bankman-Fried a hand.
</p>
<div class="c-float-right">
<aside id="cMZ6gq">
<q>“Could there be another white knight that shows up to help FTX? Who knows.”</q>
</aside>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hldKqH">
Semafor — in which Bankman-Fried was an initial investor — <a href="https://www.semafor.com/article/11/09/2022/ftx-legal-and-compliance-teams-quit">reported</a> on November 9<strong> </strong>that all of FTX’s legal and compliance staff have quit. Alameda Research’s website <a href="https://www.alameda-research.com/">is now private</a>, and Bankman-Fried <a href="https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/status/1590709189370081280?s=20&amp;t=QVhPzE1Goh1dQnI4jDN_kA">said</a> on November 10 that the fund was winding down trading. According to <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-09/us-probes-ftx-empire-over-handling-of-client-funds-and-lending?sref=qYiz2hd0">Bloomberg</a>, regulators in the US are looking into whether FTX mishandled customer funds and the relationships among FTX, FTX US, and Alameda.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="k6FwGb">
Whether this was a Bear Stearns situation, a Bernie Madoff scenario, a combination, or something else entirely, for customers holding money on the exchange, it doesn’t really matter what the mechanism was if they don’t get that money back, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-news-today-11-08-2022/card/ftx-customers-could-see-their-money-again-outside-observers-say-probably-possibly-eventually-maybe-kqLtmPutQZyW5qWFksIn">which it seems increasingly unlikely they will</a>. Not to mention the investors who backed FTX and will very likely <a href="https://www.theinformation.com/articles/ftx-venture-investors-fear-total-wipeout-in-binance-rescue-deal">not be seeing a return on that investment</a> and will lose most or all of their capital.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qeOx2z">
“It doesn’t matter what the scheme was on the back end if you can’t get your money out,” Svanevik said. “They exercised poor risk management and they jeopardized customers’ deposits, which they shouldn’t do.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ddkZnM">
The story has all sorts of twists and turns and open questions, the answers to which are still unfolding. Hundreds of millions of dollars appeared to have been hacked from FTX last week; the Securities Commission of the Bahamas <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/supposed-477-million-ftx-hack-was-actually-a-bahamian-government-asset-seizure-11668782216">now appears to</a> have been behind the removal of the funds. The company apparently hired an in-house psychiatrist who talked to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/technology/ftx-sam-bankman-fried-psychiatrist.html">the New York Times</a> about prescribing stimulants to employees. The Times and other outlets have also reported that many of the employees lived together and were romantically involved, including Bankman-Fried and Ellison. Some of the products Alameda was advertising — including high-yield loans with “no downside” — <a href="https://twitter.com/mrjasonchoi/status/1592502790932156418">look sketchy as hell</a>.<strong> </strong>
</p>
<h3 id="G2yB9h">
Crypto is still a roller coaster you might want to stay off of
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="phAko5">
FTX’s implosion has been nothing short of spectacular. While many people I spoke with noted they’d had some hesitation about FTX and Alameda intermingling in the past and <a href="https://beincrypto.com/questions-of-propriety-arise-over-links-between-ftx-and-alameda-research/">potential conflicts of interest</a>, most acknowledged they really did not expect this to happen this fast and in this way.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CnpbOw">
“[FTX] was so intent on legitimizing themselves and getting in the DC policy orbit,” Carter said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ekdVYT">
Bankman-Fried’s power has evaporated. He had really positioned himself as the face of crypto and certainly of FTX (the company literally ran <a href="https://www.vogue.com/article/gisele-bundchen-ftx-cyrpto-philanthropy-campaign-interview">ads</a> featuring him), and there’s some real reputational damage here. His regulatory and political investments, at least for the time being, are quite worthless, as is his weight in the crypto policy arena.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TkkrKS">
“The bill that Sam was working on is dead in the water, crypto loses some of its luster among these politicians that FTX was cozying up to,” Carter said. “There’s a renewed sense that this industry is just totally unregulated and run by crooks and fraudsters.”
</p>
<div class="c-float-right">
<aside id="aKeXN8">
<q>“A situation like this becomes, frankly, quite embarrassing”</q>
</aside>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="129JZQ">
“A key pillar of FTX’s marketing strategy has been to elevate the personal brand of SBF, and that’s where a situation like this becomes, frankly, quite embarrassing,” Svanevik said. “It just makes it look like a charade or something, like he was fooling people.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yN1HO6">
<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-11/sam-bankman-fried-s-assets-go-from-16-billion-to-zero-after-ftx-collapse?sref=qYiz2hd0">Bloomberg</a> estimates that Bankman-Fried’s personal wealth has been wiped out; his net worth had been pegged at nearly $16 billion at the start of the week, and is believed to have peaked at $26 billion in March. He is a major player in philanthropy and, specifically, the <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/8/8/23150496/effective-altruism-sam-bankman-fried-dustin-moskovitz-billionaire-philanthropy-crytocurrency">effective altruism movement</a>, where adherents — including some like Bankman-Fried who are or aim to become ultra-wealthy — give away money to try to do the most good for the most people. His plunging net worth means significantly fewer funds for the causes he cares about — including <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/04/democratic-megadonor-sam-bankman-fried-00049048">pandemic prevention</a> — and the effective altruism community <a href="https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yjGye7Q2jRG3jNfi2/ftx-will-probably-be-sold-at-a-steep-discount-what-we-know">has acknowledged</a> the potential impact. The movement is <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23458282/effective-altruism-sam-bankman-fried-ftx-crypto-ethics">now undergoing</a> a moment of reckoning of its own. The team behind Future Fund, his philanthropic collective, <a href="https://twitter.com/teddyschleifer/status/1590891417433296896">has resigned</a>. In a letter announcing their resignation, the team said it “looks likely that there are many committed grants” that the fund will not be able to honor, leaving many organizations that thought they were getting money from the fund in the lurch.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="faWGC3">
The entire episode draws attention to a consistent theme in crypto: It remains very much the Wild West. Even the best-known billionaire (who probably is a billionaire no longer) advancing this new technological and financial paradigm can wind up in a house-of-cards, smoke-and-mirrors scenario. Bankman-Fried’s “FTX is fine” declaration is reminiscent of a message another prominent crypto figure, Do Kwon, sent over the summer when his <a href="https://www.coinage.media/s1/inside-cryptos-largest-collapse-with-terras-do-kwon">operation collapsed</a>, telling his customers, “steady lads.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GKTlYr">
“It’s remarkable, again and again, how crypto personalities like SBF will claim that everything is fine up until the very second they have to admit it isn’t,” White said. Much of crypto hinges on the belief that everything is fine and that coins and tokens have value … unless and until that belief dissipates.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KZdw3C">
The prices of many cryptocurrencies have declined in the wake of the FTX revelations. Binance, which <a href="https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/fintech-crypto-binance-zhao/">has previously come under</a> regulatory scrutiny of its own, has highlighted its own “<a href="https://www.binance.com/en/blog/community/our-commitment-to-transparency-2895840147147652626">commitment to transparency</a>” in an effort to shore up confidence it won’t wind up like FTX. The share prices of Coinbase and Robinhood have <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-09/coinbase-robinhood-lead-10-billion-stock-rout-on-crypto-mayhem?sref=qYiz2hd0">fallen</a>. Even people in the crypto space who don’t particularly love Bankman-Fried — including Zhao — acknowledge FTX’s troubles are bad for the industry. “Do not view it as a ‘win for us,’” Zhao wrote. “User confidence is severely shaken. Regulators will scrutinize exchanges even more.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DtedJb">
The regulatory waters around crypto remain murky, and it’s not clear what consequences there will be for FTX or for the broader crypto industry. Every time there’s a blow-up like this, there are calls for greater scrutiny on the arena overall, but many regulators and policymakers remain behind the curve. It’s worth noting that up to now, a lot of them <a href="https://twitter.com/HaloCrypto/status/1590417311839981569?s=20&amp;t=b5xUxpjoaH-7HwzoKxAHUA">were listening to Bankman-Fried, too</a>. (<a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22452151/memes-bitcoin-dogecoin-elon-musk">I interviewed</a> Bankman-Fried about meme investing and regulations in 2021, when he told me, “Some things are clearly legitimate and some things are clearly bullshit, and there’s also this long tail of things that are a little bit confusing.”)
</p>
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“SBF was just spending a lot of time in DC schmoozing with lawmakers and giving recommendations on possible crypto regulation, acting as the ‘adult in the room’ and the liaison from the crypto industry,” White said. “If I was those legislators, I would be questioning a lot of his suggestions.”
</p>
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“Everyone wants to go bankless until they get punched in the face, and after they get punched in the face they say, ‘Hold on, where are the regulators?’” Borthwick said. But, he noted, this saga is very much still unfolding. “This isn’t the end of it.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="M3eh9y">
<em><strong>Update, November 11, 10:45 am:</strong></em><em> This story was originally published on November 10 and has been updated to reflect FTX’s bankruptcy filing, Bankman-Fried’s resignation as CEO, and developments at his Future Fund.</em>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TWJ3Gr">
<em><strong>Update, November 16:</strong></em><em> This piece has been updated with additional information about the status of Future Perfect’s grant from the Building a Stronger Future foundation.</em>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="667K0F">
<em><strong>Update, November 18, 4 pm ET:</strong></em><em> This piece has been updated throughout with further fallout from Bankman-Fried’s dealings, statements, and Twitter DMs. </em>
</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Kerala Premier League to begin on November 24</strong> - Kerala Blasters and FC Kerala return through qualifying route</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Aradhya, Maaya clinch a double each</strong> - Sports Bureau</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>FIFA chief blasts ‘hypocrisy’ of Western nations on eve of World Cup</strong> - Gianni Infantino said that the Western critics of Qatar's human rights record making a passionate defence of the World Cup in the Gulf state</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Kriish Tyagi wins the title</strong> - Sports Bureau</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Steely Smith sees Australia to series win against England</strong> - Both sides rested their captains, with Moeen Ali deputising for Joss Butler, while Josh Hazelwood was the surprise pick to lead Australia with Pat Cummins sitting out</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>House set on fire, three suffer burn injuries</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Heightened vigil helps police net 20 drug pushers in three months in Kozhikode</strong> - Synthetic drugs worth ₹25 lakh seized after launch of intensified flash inspections covering suspected locations in city</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>New police chief assumes charge in Alappuzha</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>18 from Eluru district in A.P. injured as bus overturns near Pathanamthitta in Kerala</strong> - Except two, all the other injured are out of danger, says Eluru Collector</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Will questioning attracts attacks: Sanjay asks</strong> - Visits Arvind house, condemns attack by TRS activists</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Leave if you can to save energy - Ukraine power boss</strong> - Reducing electricity use is crucial, head of Ukraine’s biggest private energy firm tells the BBC.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: Were Russian soldiers shot after surrendering?</strong> - Video has emerged that Russia says shows the killing of their troops in eastern Ukraine.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A journey to the site of the Nord Stream explosions</strong> - As Sweden says the gas lines were blown up deliberately, our Europe editor reports from the scene.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>MH17: Australia asks Russia to hand over three who downed airliner</strong> - Australia’s demand comes after the men are found guilty of shooting down MH17 over eastern Ukraine.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>French mystery over Normandy murder without victim’s body</strong> - Police are convinced a woman has been murdered: the problem is no-one has been reported missing.</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The road to low-carbon concrete</strong> - Humanity’s love affair with cement and concrete results in massive CO<sub>2</sub> emissions. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1898748">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>New Meta AI demo writes racist and inaccurate scientific literature, gets pulled</strong> - Galactica language model generated convincing text about fact and nonsense alike. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1899005">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Elizabeth Holmes sentenced to 11.25 years in prison for Theranos fraud</strong> - Holmes is expected to appeal. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1898947">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>ID.me lied to IRS about unemployment fraud, average wait times, House Dems say</strong> - ID.me said $414 billion was lost—10 times higher than feds’ estimate. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1899025">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Researchers build a working camera out of atomically thin semiconductors</strong> - Sheet of atoms works similarly to silicon but has some unique properties. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1899030">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>A politician dies</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
So a politician dies and ends up standing in front of the pearly gates. Saint Peter looks at him for a second, flicks through his book, and finds his name.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“So, you’re a politician…” “Well, yes, is that a problem?” “Oh no, no problem. But we’ve recently adopted a new system for people in your line of work, and unfortunately you will have to spend a day in Hell. After that however, you’re free to choose where you want to spend eternity!”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Wait, I have to spend a day in Hell??” says the politician. “Them’s the rules” Says St Peter, clicks his fingers, and WOOMPH, the guy dissapears…
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
And awakes, curled up with his hands over his eyes, knowing he’s in Hell. Cautiously, he listens for the screams, sniffs the air for brimstone, and finds… Nothing. Just the smell of, is that fabric softener? And cut grass, this can’t be right?
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Open your eyes!” says a voice. “C’mon, wakey wakey, we’ve only got 24 hours!”. Nervously, he uncovers his eyes, looks around, and sees he’s in a hotel room. A nice one too. Wait, this is a penthouse suite… And there’s a smiling man in a suit, holding a martini. “Who are you??” The politician asks. “Well, I’m Satan!” says the man, handing him the drink and helping him to his feet. “Welcome to Hell!” “Wait, this is Hell? But… Where’s all the pain and suffering?” he asks. Satan throws him a wink. “Oh, we’ve been a bit mis-represented over the years, it’s a long story. Anyway, this is your room! The minibar is of course free, as is the room service, there’s extra towels next to the hot-tub, and if you need anything, just call reception. But enough of this! It’s a beautiful day, and if you’d care to look outside…” Slightly stunned by the opulent surroundings, the man wanders over to the floor-to-ceiling windows through which the sun is glowing, looks far down, and sees a group of people cheering and waving at him from a golf course. “It’s one of 5 pro-level courses on site, and there’s another 6 just a few minutes drive out past the beach and harbour!” says Satan, answering his unasked question. So they head down in the lift, walk out through the glittering lobby where everyone waves and welcomes the man, as Satan signs autographs and cherrily talks shop with the laughing staff. And as he walks out, he sees the group on the golf course are made up of every one of his old friends, people he’s admired for years but never met or worked with, and people whose work he’s admired but died long before his career started. And out of the middle of this group walks his wife, with a massive smile and the body she had when she was 20, who throws her arms around him and plants a delicate kiss on his cheek. Everyone cheers and applauds, and as they slap him on the back and trade jokes, his worst enemy arrives, as a 2 foot tall goblin-esque caddy. He spends the day in the bright sunshine on the course, having the time of his life laughing at jokes and carrying important discussions, putting the world to rights with his friends while holding his delighted wife next to him as she gazes lovingly at him. Later, they return to the hotel for dinner and have an enormous meal, perfectly cooked, which descends into a food-fight when someone accidentally throws a bread roll at the next table (where Ghandi is having a game of truth-or-dare with Marylin Monroe). As everyone is falling about laughing and flinging breadsticks at each other, his wife whispers in his ear… And they return to their penthouse suite, and spend the rest of the night making love like they did on their honeymoon. After 6 hours of intense passion, the man falls deep into the 100% Egyptian cotton pillows, and falls into a deep and happy sleep…
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
And is woken up by St Peter. “So, that was Hell. Wasn’t what you were expecting, I bet?” “No sir!” says the man. “So then” says St Peter “you can make your choice. It’s Hell, which you saw, or Heaven, which has choral singing, talking to God, white robes, and so on”. “Well… I know this sounds strange, but on balance, I think I’d prefer Hell” says the politician. “Not a problem, we totally understand! Enjoy!” Says St Peter, and clicks his fingers again.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The man wakes up in total darkness, the stench of ammonia filling the air and distant screams the only noise. As he adjusts, he can see the only light is from belches of flame far away, illuminating the ragged remains of people being tortured or burning in a sulphurous ocean. A sudden bolt of lightning reveals Satan next to him, wearing the same suit as before and grinning, holding a soldering iron in one hand and a coil of razor-wire in the other. “What’s this??” He cries. “Where’s the hotel?? Where’s my wife??? Where’s the minibar, the golf-courses, the pool, the restaurant, the free drinks and the sunshine???”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Ah”, says Satan. “You see, yesterday, we were campaigning. But today, you voted…”
</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/LadeeAlana"> /u/LadeeAlana </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/yz7n8e/a_politician_dies/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/yz7n8e/a_politician_dies/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>So I put a giant map of the world up on the wall and gave my wife a dart. I told her wherever it lands is where we go on holiday.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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I guess we’re spending three weeks behind the fridge.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Excellent-Captain-93"> /u/Excellent-Captain-93 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/yyj16a/so_i_put_a_giant_map_of_the_world_up_on_the_wall/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/yyj16a/so_i_put_a_giant_map_of_the_world_up_on_the_wall/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>Do you know how to make $20B in the Tech business?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Start with $44B
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/braddamit"> /u/braddamit </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/yyqyez/do_you_know_how_to_make_20b_in_the_tech_business/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/yyqyez/do_you_know_how_to_make_20b_in_the_tech_business/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>Yo mama so fat, they did a story on how fat she was on the channel 3 news</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
I switched to channel 7 and you could still see her ass in the corner of the screen
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/oehheo"> /u/oehheo </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/yz9rxm/yo_mama_so_fat_they_did_a_story_on_how_fat_she/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/yz9rxm/yo_mama_so_fat_they_did_a_story_on_how_fat_she/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>As I knelt down with a pair of size 4 shoes in front of this blonde in a short skirt, I couldn’t resist a quick glance at her knickers.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Hey Cheeky!” she said as she gave me a playful kick. “I bet the only reason you work here is to look up girls’ skirts, isn’t it?”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“That’s an absolutely ridiculous accusation, Madam” I said sternly. “I don’t even work here.”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/DarbyCrashLanding"> /u/DarbyCrashLanding </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/yyrz8v/as_i_knelt_down_with_a_pair_of_size_4_shoes_in/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/yyrz8v/as_i_knelt_down_with_a_pair_of_size_4_shoes_in/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
</ul>
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